Lara Vesta's Blog, page 12

Staying the Path

For a while I kept hoping things would magically improve... If you have followed my blog for a while, you might know that this past year my family experienced some upheaval.  We were displaced from our home of four years right before I had planned to roll out some new offerings for my business:  courses, consulting, ceremonies...all paused mid-birth.  The summer was a flurry of moving and intensive child rearing, and I was eager for the school year to start, so I could get back to work again.

Expectations, I have learned in these past seven months, are tenuous at best.

In September we experienced some severe family conflict, totally heartbreaking and unanticipated.  It is still in process, continuing even today, the ramifications far reaching and stretching us beyond capacity in terms of both resources and time.

Then both of our cars broke down. 

Then my kids, one after another, came down with chicken pox.  They were out of school for a month, total.

And by now it was November.  Another explosion of family conflict, this time with a different co-parent (we are a blended family with two former spouses co-parenting our three kids--it is complicated at best, but this year has been infinitely complex).  

As a result, at the end of November with no warning or preparation, I took on the project of homeschooling my children.

Then it was Christmas.  Three kids, three households.  Enough said.

In January we experienced a dramatic custodial shift.  In February, yet another major family transition.

My husband likens this time to being tossed in a raging river.  I see it swimming in rough seas, undertow, waves rolling, the scrape of sand, gasping for breath.

Whatever the metaphor it has been a tough year, and my work, my business, has been the sacrifice. The question with any transition:  How are we to live our lives amid such shift? In this nearly constant mash of trial I have contemplated and integrated every approach in my arsenal:

Surrender

Aggression

Self-Care

Spiritual Practice

Therapy

Logic

Education

Stamina

Supplements

Medication

Meditation

Resignation

I thought I was a pro at transition, having endured a lot in the past ten years.  But I am humbled by the relentless intensity.  In fact, stripped down to the essence, there is only one thing that has supported us through this time:

Help.  Help from our family, help from our friends, help from our community.  We need help, and we have become stretched enough,  exhausted enough, pliable enough to ask for it.  It took a long time to get here, and we have only recently begun this approach, but already the offers and outpouring has been so loving and healing .  Already we feel that maybe, in time, some semblance of the life we remember will return. Rest, Renewal, Hope I am not an expert in transition.  No one is.  But I do know one thing:  we should not attend life's changes in isolation.

We need our community.  

My desire to return to work is very strong.  The work of ritual, ceremony, self-care and community.  The work of creative life enhancement and joyful seasonal gathering.  The work of my heart awaits.

Incrementally and in good time, I am emerging.  For now, I pray for patience--not my strong suit--and the strength of persistence.  I pray for rest, renewal and blooming when the moment is ripe.  Those offerings of last year await release, but I know now I cannot push it.  Everything has its season, all is revealed in time.

In the meantime, I want to invite you to the Moon Divas Community on Facebook, where we will be posting some information on community events this spring, including a burning and planting ritual this March.

Be well, beloved community.  May you find peace and trust your heart.
xox

Holy Holy: Total Life Transformation and a Fire Ceremony

"Standing in the Fire With an Open Heart" by PK Chapter One:  Chicken Pox For nearly a month this fall I was housebound, tending to children with the chicken pox. For those of you who know my story, you might remember that my children (ages 10 and 12) live away from me during the school week, and have for six years now, so it is irregular for them to be in the house with such consistency except on weekends and vacations.  In fact, because there was some fear of contagion, they were with me consistently in a way they haven't been since their dad and I divorced when they were three and five.   In our intensive time together a few things came clear:

1.  My son was truly miserable at his school, and speaking with a despair I'd never heard from him before.  He's twelve, and on his first day back he cried to me in the parking lot, clinging to me as if he were a tiny boy.  

2.  My daughter has wanted more time with me for years now and having this time was rich for her.  She also struggles in school, but for different reasons.  She is super bright, already the youngest in her class due to starting kinder early, and spends a good portion of her day bored with the repetition and reviews of school.

3.  We needed to make a change.

So here it is, less than two weeks later, and due to convolutions of communication and some sort of divine intervention I have become a homeschooling mother of two.  Which turns everything on its head for our blended family of five, in almost every way…not to mention what a month of chicken pox nursing and negotiations has done to my teaching and business capabilities.

Without going into the details (both my old Vestal Transitions blog and The Guidebook have loads of historical data if you are interested) I want to share my elation, my joy, my fear and trepidation at this total transformation of our lives in such a short time.  If you had told me in September that my whole experience would be changed by December in such a dramatic way, I could not have predicted it.  

Change comes.  Be ready.  What makes us ready?

As my former yoga teacher used to say, "Practice makes us ready."

What is your practice? Chapter Two:  The Eternal Necessities of Self-Care and Story Showing For the past five years I have made self-care and story showing my mantra.  These are the things I most need in my life, these are the pieces that keep me centered when everything tumbles down, burns away.  And you know what?  They work.  Self-care, simply put, is putting first that which nourishes you most, even if it is just for a small chunk of time, every day.  Story showing (outlined in The Moon Divas Guidebook) means keeping a record of that practice, because words are powerful, words transform the world, and when you inscribe your intention to put that which nourishes you FIRST, you are telling the universe, the creatrix that you are worthy of the very best in life.

I've shared many times my daily self-care practice:  coffee, four sun salutations, light the candles on the altar, say a prayer of thanks, write for as many uninterrupted minutes as I can.

This practice = me, balanced.  

Without this practice = me all tangled up and cranky.

This past month I found a book that articulates beautifully (in both philosophical and scientific terms) why writing is such a powerful catalyst for change.  It's called Writing Down Your Soul by Janet Conner, and is a how to for a simple, spirited writing practice.  I don't normally buy writing books--I feel pretty flush with possibilities at present--but as I wandered through the bookstore I found a little card.  It read:

You are teachable.

And opened up my heart.
"Forget your perfect offering."--Leonard Cohen I don't know what any of this means.  This time, this movement, has shaken me to the core.

I thought for a while about giving up on business entirely.

I thought for a while about permanent retreat.

I thought about getting a really simple job that would help pay the bills, piecework I could do while the kids study.

Something still has drawn me back.  I know I can't teach right now (except for my two kids), but I can still offer class materials online.  I can't stress out about finished products, but I have been writing consistently over the past few months and have eighty-five pages of something to show for it…and lots of will to make more to come.

Right now is a time of release, a release of stories that no longer serve the whole, a release of seven years of grief and doubt, a release of tension and concern.  In the void of the release (a theme for this year, beginning with the loss of our home) there awakens potential.

So the cycle continues.  And for now, I want to keep creating connections, building a web of divas and dear ones who are practicing too, sharing our wisdom and gathering our druthers for what may come.  Let's face it:  darling ones, whoever you are, reading this blog somewhere in the miraculous night, we are stronger together. Fire Ceremony for Transformation
Adapted from The Moon Divas Guidebook “Fire allows for rapid transformation. It provides the avenue to let go of the old story and drama, to renew and to be reborn.”  --From Transformational Freedom

Fire cleanses and purifies.  What rises from the ashes literally in gardens,  metaphorically or mythically in stories, is new growth.  In the forest, fire clears deadwood and cracks seeds.

To prepare for this exercise of burning you will need to write down everything you wish to release.  Maybe it is in list form, maybe it is in a letter.  Let the words flow through you.  Don't think, just write.  Read it through.  Your subconscious mind might have some revealing information about what you must let go of in order to grow.

To release the old  you will need a place for safe burning (a fire pit, fireplace, barbecue, thick ceramic bowl or flower pot) and a source of flame.

*note* respect and honor the power of fire.  Never burn anything without giving it your full attention.
*note* you may also complete this release by burying or composting your list if fire is not an option

Examine your list one last time, then tear it into pieces.  As you tear, speak aloud what you are letting go of.  Fear?  Secrecy?  Shame?  Be bold, speak it.

Place the pieces in the burn receptacle.  Set the old aflame.

Watch it burn.  Are there any words that catch your eye or linger?  Bless them.  Bless the old story.  Let it go with love.

When the ashes are cool place them on the earth or in a body of water.  Then cleanse yourself with water, a bath or shower, the ocean, a river or rain.

Celebrate.  You are free.

Movement, Questions and Answers

I've moved!  In the interest of consolidation and creating space on this site for the evolution of Vestal U, I'm now blogging at www.laravesta.com.  Please come visit!  I'm creating anew and have connections and inspirations I'd love to share with this community.

Here's a few other things you might be curious about:

What happened to Moon Divas Certification?

MD Certification still exists, though it is evolving mostly due to a revelation that came my way last month.   In the nine months since the Pilot project was offered, none of the participating Certification students have applied to complete their Certificate.

That's right, none.  

And, I saw how by creating an expert-oriented certificate process, some women became alienated from the work and others were unable to step into it fully without "professional" support.

But, as I wrote in the Guidebook, quoting Pattiann Rogers, "I am not an expert in anything."

I came to Moon Divas through following a deeper impulse, and I believe fully that each and every woman can access this sacred power, this inner knowing.  It is already in you.  I cannot bestow it, only share my story and love in the hopes that you will do the same.  The Guidebook is a template of my journey, a synthesis of tools and art and stories that speak to me.  I made the Guidebook for you, for all women who have hated themselves, who have felt ugly or unloved or powerless or less than enough.  

"Each of you has access to the powerful knowledge of women through time, the natural world and all divinity.  It does not need to be given to you.  There is no purchase or product necessary.  It is already in you, in the wonder you are."  --from The Moon Divas Guidebook

We need each other now, right now.  We need our sisters and daughters and elders and mothers to gather in community and sing ourselves back to fullness today.  I want to be a bridge, a torch, a holy light shining the path for anyone who is brave enough to gather in their community and tap into their bodies and stories with honoring.  I don't want to be a barrier, intimidating, pre-selecting.  This work belongs to all of us, and we need it now.  Not when we are better, smarter, something more.  We need more love.  Together.  Today. The intention of Moon Divas Certification was to attract women who wanted to lead with this work into their communities.  I developed a set of courses and tools to enrich the Guidebook process and that could be used as curriculum for teaching Moon Divas workshops and classes.  Anyone who completes the Certification program is still welcome to do this, but I realized after talking with program participants that I needed to foster more independence and openness, to take the Moon Divas work out of my hands and put it into form for anyone who wishes it without barriers.

Here is how my work is transforming:  I am giving it to love.

I don't want to trick or manipulate you with advertising, I don't want to be on social media unless it is for play, and I don't want to make you feel like you need my approval before you use the Moon Divas Guidebook or any work I've created.

I do want us to weave bright community wherever we are, in real time with our neighbors.  I want to give my work and art and ideas to the creation of this community, as an offering for you to do with and use as you wish.
I want you to feel beautiful, blessed and powerful in the process.  I think there are many ways of doing business in the world and I want to start experimenting with those that align with my heart's desire.  Won't you join me?

So here are the changes to my practice, Moon Divas and Vestal U for now:

1.  I am teaching one final gig in Portland on November 5th at In Other Words Books, then will be writing full-time until further notice.  I will continue to blog, to be active in my local Moon Divas community, and am creating a quarterly Muse-letter of things that truly inspire me and fill me up.  You can sign up here if interested.

2.  I have created a simple, affordable Moon Divas Companion Course from the Certification materials:  twelve modules and a book's worth of supplemental curriculum.  This is a self-study course that may be used in tandem with the Guidebook, and can be investigated alone or with a group.  Believe in yourself.  You have everything you need to do this work, to create the life you want.  Feel the fear, and do it anyway.  You are guided and protected in each and every choice.

3.  The Guidebook E-Book is still free for anyone who wishes it, and is available now for download at www.laravesta.com with no strings attached (you don't have to give me your email address in exchange anymore...).  I have decided to offer it for sale as well, and will donate all proceeds from any e-book sales to a cause supporting the Moon Divas vision of "healing, strength and a potent love".  This quarter, I'll be donating to the Gateway Center for Domestic Violence Services in Portland, OR.

4.  Vestal U is gestating.  There will be news and new beginnings as it unfolds in its unique, non-linear and feminine way.  Stay tuned...

I want to thank all of you who have witnessed my unfolding over the past fifteen months.  My lesson has been trust, my alignment to a deep true calling so hard to hear in the midst of my own fear, the loud world of business advice and personal challenges.  The process of paring away what was unnecessary must look chaotic and undisciplined from the outside, and I've been at times painfully aware of this.  But after years of illness and depression I've learned enough to believe in the moment, to allow the mystery to work its wonder in spirals and nebulas on the mist-filled path.  I leave you with a prayer poem, and hope for new beginnings wherever lands your heart:

Ode to Unmaking

God within me
be not light
this day must come to darkness
the leaf, winter
Grace in decay.
God within me 
be not forgiving
the universe does not
forgive the earth its orbit
the mother does not
forgive the child 
cradled in her womb.
Oh God,
be a great cloud
lichen and
the breath of trees.
For then, what is
may be
and what is holy
may be more holy.
Holy the breaking
Holy the white path
absent any moon.

Under the Cloak

Sometimes in life "go with the flow" means life vest, helmet and a series of Class 5 rapids.

I've needed to take some quiet time, am still quieting, centering...working on the immediate.  This week that included car repairs, parent-teacher conferences, job transitions and a child with chicken pox.  

Here's the thing about quiet:  it feeds my soul.  I forget in the fuss and fray of my ego mind how busy and noisy deplete resources, sap strength and delay the hard won joys present even in challenge.

The other thing about quiet?  It gets me closer to that beating heart of spirit so present in these autumn days.  I find myself appreciating the leaf fall, last bloom, bee song and thinking less about the past or worrying about the future.  I feel my wholeness in silence. Yesterday I attended a writing workshop with the wonderful Marilyn Sewell, whose book Cries of the Spirit has been a source of inspiration for me since 1994.  During the workshop she read frequently from the poems of William Stafford, and I want to leave you with these lines which lodged, wonderfully, in my heart:

The Way It Is
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Marilyn described the thread as golden, luminous, our divine spark.  And I felt, thought about all of us shimmering, that thread leading us home to each moment, home to our precious lives. Closer to my heart I've been able to make some challenging but essential choices, and I'll be sharing more about those in the weeks to come.  But until then, I wish for you quiet, self imposed or organically unfolding and leave you with another of my favorite poems, this by Wendell Berry:

The Peace of Wild Things


When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things 
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Full Moon Beginnings: Live YOUR Dream!

Welcome, friends, to my consolidated life.

For the past year I've been scrambling through waves of business ideas, plans, brand identity...and the ever present attendant fears of failure, disappointment, decrease.

On this full moon, I'm proud to say I am no longer afraid.  I am committing to my dream, I've been hired by the universe to complete a particular kind of work.  And the time is now.

For now I need to get in the car and run down the road for an afternoon of parent-teacher conferences.  But there is more to come.  We, all of us, can begin again at any time to live the life we've imagined.

Just Because You're Good at Something Doesn't Mean You Should do it for a Living: Lessons Learned in a Year of Business

I was an excellent teacher.

For the past seven years, teaching has been my entire professional focus.  Even as I built Vestal Transitions, and evolved Vestal U, the core of my mission was education.

Which makes sense.  My professional life began when I was hired as a teaching associate and eventually became an Assistant Professor of English.  My friend John Walker once told me that in order to teach honorably, you must give yourself to it fully.  And I did this, to the best of my ability, for years.

I have an exceptional family.

We are unique in so many ways.  Divorced and blended, distanced and attached, kids on all edges of many spectrums.

I've worked very hard to parent my way through some pretty extraordinary circumstances.  When I left university teaching to start my own business it was for my health and the health of my family.  I couldn't parent the way I needed to and teach the way I had to simultaneously.  My excellent teaching and exceptional parenting left me nothing at the end by way of energy, or time.

Or creativity. Making the Moon Divas Guidebook healed something huge in me.

And for the first time in years I was able to own and acknowledge that I am a maker, that writing and art are essential to me.  Air, water, food, love.  

So why did I start a business without making at the core?  Where my creative energy had to continuously compete with social media, marketing strategies, ceremonies, and education?

Well, that's what I'm good at.  And these things make money.  Not much, but a little.  It's about survival, right? The above picture is of my brother's dog, Ollie.  Ollie is laughing.  She is laughing at me, at you, at any one of us who thinks we can keep living our lives in the same way, with the same mistakes and expect different outcomes.

She is laughing at every one of us who is an excellent teacher, nurse, social worker, bartender, business owner, cruise director....insert your profession here...but who doesn't LOVE that work FIRST.

See, here's the deal.  I love teaching.  But I can't give myself fully to what doesn't give back.  When I finish a class, I feel tired, drained.  

When I finish an essay or a drawing, I feel exhilarated, centered, blissful in my being.  Even if what I created was crap, the act of creating feeds me.  And I've made enough things now to know that over time creations evolve, improve, become all they need to be. "Antler Girl" by Anne Siems I'm good at a lot of things.  It's taken many years of therapy and self care and women's community to own my blessings.  All of us are good at a lot of things.  But just because you are an amazing something doesn't mean that is what you are meant to give your life energy to.

You know what you are meant to do.  Chances are you've always known.

Two weeks ago at the Moon Divas Web Weaving and Gathering in Portland (which is becoming such a great example of relaxed and organic teaching-learning community) we did an exercise where we wrote our true dream.  Ok, totally ripped off the exercise from the first season of Glee, but it is a vital one:

What is your true dream?  What do you love to do, that you have done since childhood, with ease and joy?

Mine, no surprise, is writing.  I have always been a storyteller.  I am a creator and maker and believed in myself enough to get an MFA in Fiction, to teach writing at the college level, to write a book on a subject I'm passionate about.  But why won't I allow myself to write full time?  To be guided by my own creative compass?

Why do I cloak myself in so many other professions--teacher, celebrant, consultant, coach, entrepreneur--that I cannot ever possibly find time to write in the way I must to be successful?  Why do I make myself accountable to so many others when I'm not accountable to myself?

It is, plain and simple, a form of self-sabotage. "Priestess of Delphi by John Collier I had big plans for October.  Teleconferences.  Webinars.  Promotional launches and business restructuring that had been in the works before summer began.  Some of you might remember that at the beginning of the summer I had to move.  Then, at the end, another obstacle crossed my path, one that has taken the better part of the past month to sort through.  In fact, if I revisit my attempts at educational extravaganzas, self-promotion and big launches in the past year, at every occasion I hit obstructions.  As if I were being diverted.  As if the path itself were wrong.

And finally, after so many months of uncertainty, I am willing to pause and pray for direction.

I am going "under the cloak" for a bit.  To feel in to my dream.  To ask for guidance.  To tend to my family and resolve some personal issues.  To begin making.

I don't know what this means for the future, but I feel a low hum of excitement.   Something extraordinary is already begun.  

I send love to all of you who are good at what you do but do not love it first.

May we live our imagined lives.

A Lesson and A Promise

"Bee Prosperity" by Greg Spalenka What follows is an essay I wrote last month, one published in unfinished form in The Jefferson Monthly (my error, though one of computation or divine intervention I cannot say...).  It is the last section, the one missing from the Monthly edition, I hope readers will attend to.  We must serve what we love.  We must speak for what cannot.  Please read, please speak, please share. Elegy, Apiaries and a War of Aesthetics
or, Beauty and the Bees 1.

What do 50,000 dying bees look like?   A writhing scatter of black, swept by early morning brooms at a Target parking lot in Wilsonville, OR.   It is old news now, all the way back in June, but it sticks with me:  50,000 bees, feeding on the linden trees.  A neonicotinoid pesticide was applied to the trees to control aphids, which create a sticky secretion that was dripping on cars in the parking lot.

Neonicotinoids—“neonics”-- are neurotoxic.  Even in small amounts they can impact bees’ immune systems and brain functioning.  They are also ingredients in the most popular home, garden, agricultural and industrial pesticides.

50,000 bees is a droplet in the teeming sea of our ecosystem, but a score of these drops is a bucket, a bathtub, a river of dying insects essential to the plants, our food, our lives.

2.

Four years ago this October, I began a garden.  Settled in a house for the first time in a while, I planned to root in the only way I’ve ever known:  dig deep.  I was raised with subsistence gardens, learned small-scale organic farming from my parents, fruiting and flowering techniques from neighbors and permaculture from books and practice.  In twenty years I’ve planted at least as many gardens, leaving behind a legacy of raised beds, berms and perennials at every house I’ve ever lived in.  Almost. 

The house I’d moved into was built in the 1940’s and had a long swath of south-facing neglected lawn.  That autumn I sheet mulched and from the neighbor’s maple leaves made a bed for peas and lettuce in the early spring.  Later, employing my partner and children in the endeavor, we mulched much of the upper yard and the parking strip.  That next summer we brought in five yards of compost and topsoil, and planted natives, medicinal herbs, and a full vegetable plot.

The garden quickly became a community center.  Our sunflowers were gossip magnets, our cherry tomatoes beloved snacks, our three sisters plot of corn, beans and squash a hiding place for wayward dogs and children.  We left one section of grasses long, allowed the Queen Anne’s Lace to flourish and bloom, a favorite of the pollinators.  Rare insects and birds were sighted; even an owl graced our little city lot.

In three years time, there was little lawn left.  My gardens are never tidy.  They are fecund and weedy and wild.  Sometimes I would feel the pinch of shame that those of us whose clothes are never totally pressed, whose nails are not free of soil, experience in the presence of groomed-ness.  

Not everyone likes wild things. 

3.

In Celtic myth, bees are the messengers between humans and the spirit world.

In the Norse tales, bees feed on the dew of Yggdrasil, the World Tree.

Mead is the most ancient fermented drink, said to give the sipper the gift of poetic inspiration.

This summer I sat at a wedding table with two Classics scholars from the University of Washington who told me that bees to the Greeks and Romans were symbols of divinity, the soul, love, mysteries, femininity, community, the military and life’s sweetness.

Through the world, bees have been sacred beings, gift givers, with guardians and priestesses to tend and communicate the will of the hive.

An apiary is a traditional home for bees, usually honeybees, also known as a bee yard.  My garden was an apiary, housing thousands of bees in every variety.

When I was a child I learned a little poem:

A crocus,

A robin,

A bee,

It’s the start of spring

You’ll see.

Ever since I look for bees as the harbingers of springtime.  At the height of summer I love to sit in a flowering place and watch them…the colors are astounding, the hum tangible deep inside my chest.  As autumn closes, the darkening days and rains bring an end to the bee visits.  A first frost, and the bee yard is quiet for a while.

4.

This past June I was trying to put in my vegetable garden, but something felt wrong.  The beds created four years ago were all rich with humus, the established herbs, shrubs and flowers exuberant in their growth.  But I felt a hesitation in my heart, and after returning from the farm store empty handed I received an email from our landlord stating that she was sorry but she needed to make a balloon payment on her mortgage.  She was selling our home.

The listing agent didn’t like the garden.  He thought it made the house look small.  Two weeks after we moved out, they hired a landscaper to tear up the plants, level the soil and spread the bare yard with bark mulch.

5.

Albert Einstein said that if bees disappeared, humankind would have four years of life before we too would become extinct.  What would those four years look like?

6. 

A partial list of plants the bees loved in my garden:

Aster, mint, sunflower, monkey flower, twinberry, willow, California poppy, red currant, hazel, sage, angelica, fennel, buckwheat, goldenrod, rose, dandelion, phacelia, calendula, bleeding heart, chrysanthemum, forget me not, lavender, coneflower, rosemary (for remembrance).

Names of native bees endangered or believed extinct according to the Xerces Society:

Western bumble bee, rusty patched bumble bee, yellow banded bumble bee, American bumble bee, Franklin’s bumble bee.

Type of bees primarily killed by the poison in Wilsonville:

Bumble bees.

7.

Albert Einstein also said there were two ways to live your life.  One as if nothing is a miracle.  The other as though everything is a miracle.

In our common human history, we all have ancestors who saw the world as miraculous, and themselves a part of the intricate cycles that govern life.  Even in our earliest history, the hum of a bumblebee in the center of the flower was next month’s fruit.  The sun ripened the fruit, the rain watered it, and if we sang the appropriate songs, offered our reverence, life continued on.

I don’t have a garden now.  We are living in an apartment, saving money and biding time until we can buy a home of our own.  The apartment is ringed by tended lawns, weed less borders.  But at the edge of our complex is a field with wild asters, mugwort and blackberries.  If I listen, I can hear them say that the sacred is sacred, whether we choose to see it or not.  There is a call deep in our blood to revere, protect, understand and sweeten each day with love of the wild things.  In our yards, in the byways, in the farmlands.  In ourselves.

After the bumblebee poisoning in Wilsonville, the Oregon Department of Agriculture issued a 180-day temporary ban of systemic neonicotinoids in Oregon.  There is a petition circulating to make the ban permanent.  Add your voice:

http://www.change.org/petitions/katy-coba-director-oregon-department-of-agriculture-ban-neonicotinoids-in-oregon 

5 Ways to Get Grounded

Grounding is something I have to take seriously.

Between parenting, navigating my children's other households, work, partnership and the daily details of life as we know it, I can float away on a balloon of tasks done and undone, run through my days in a flurry of exhaustion never setting foot on the earth, never releasing anxieties or frustrations, never feeling nourished, relaxed, alive.

A big part of my work in the past year has been grounding, deepening, whatever the situation, wherever I'm at.  When I am rooted, the disturbances of each day become but wind in my branches.  When centered, the core of me rests even as I navigate the storm.

It is the hows of grounding, centering, rooting that I want to share with you today.  These are all techniques I've learned or developed over time.  They have saved me from psychological spinout, and kept me strong even in the most dire situations.  

The exercise of conscious of grounding will help you ROOT and THRIVE. Grounding 1:  Be a Tree I learned the following meditation many years ago, and have since seen its incarnation modified in hundreds of formats by many individuals.  I've used it in all of my university classes, with adults and children both in community settings, and it is visibly effective at calming and connecting participants.  When I start to get jumpy energetically, through stress, anxiety or conflict, a few minutes with this exercise realigns me.  I call it the Golden Tree.

(Note:  Sitting or standing near a tree can be super helpful the first few times you practice this exercise, for visualization and energetic purposes.  Trees know how to be rooted!)

1.  Stand or sit comfortably with your spine straight, hands loose and open at your sides.

Breathe deeply two or three times, letting all of the air out at the exhale, opening to the big new air on the inhale.

2.  Then, allow yourself to imagine you have roots extending from your body into the earth.  Maybe you see them, maybe you feel them, maybe you can hear them grow.  Maybe, for now, you just tell yourself you have roots.  All of the above are fine.

3.  As you exhale, imagine your roots growing wide and far, networking deep into the soil, through substrate and bedrock, lengthening and strong.

4.  Now visualize the center of the earth, a round of molten energy.  Maybe it has heat, maybe you see it as a color.  I usually see the color as a luminous gold, but whatever you sense is correct for you.  Breathe your roots into the center.  Let them touch the core.  And as you inhale, begin to draw that energy, light, heat, up your roots.

5.  See the energy of the earth moving up your roots.  With each inhale, you draw up more, until it begins to flow into your body.  Maybe you feel a little shock as it reaches you.  Maybe you experience a warmth or tingling as it pours up your body.   Breathe it through all of your body, until at last it reaches the crown of your head.  Then breathe the earth's energy out the top of your head in a fountain of branches.

6.  Allow your branches to become heavy, dropping until they reach the earth and connect with your roots.  Now you can inhale energy up through your roots and exhale it back out your branches into the ground.  Visualize the energy clearing out any gunk in the process.  You are a circuit for the deep energetics of the earth.  Breathe until you feel vital and connected.

This may be practiced with your eyes open and just breath--useful in traffic--or in mini mode:  A brief inhale and exhale, sending energy from the earth through your body and down again.


Photo from Eyes as Big as Plates Grounding 2:  Get Out The one thing that grounds me faster than the Golden Tree is to go outside.

When I worked as the Public Relations Coordinator of Southern Oregon University thirteen years ago, I was pregnant with my first child.  Universities are like most institutions, plagued by the petty kingdoms and squabbles of factions misaligned, and I was in the middle--swollen, sensitive and still very inexperienced at the age of twenty-five.  The furies and concerns of others I tended to take to heart, and not to my advantage.

But I made a practice of spending my lunch hour out of doors, in a little creek gully behind the physical plant.  I found that I could release my worries into the stream, be healed by the scent of fallen leaves, sun or rain, listen to the trees, and know that I was part of this world--this living breathing natural world--as well as the worlds of human creation that awaited me inside.

One of my favorite poets is Wendell Berry.  And here, by him, is one of my all-time favorite poems.  Maybe read it outside?

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things 
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Grounding 3:  Be in the Big BIG Picture While you are outside, look up.  Beyond the clouds, beyond the curve of the earth's atmosphere, beyond the circle of our rotation, beyond the sun.  In the stars we see infinity, and hopefully, maybe, the miracle of our own existence.  Each star a sun, but thus far no planet like ours has been found.  No life like ours, either.

I find the big picture sobering, enlivening.  Holy.  My small life is given meaning by its insignificance, by the apparent mystery of all that surrounds me.  My troubles are less than a cell in the scope of the universe, and at the same time I am part of a pattern greater than I can ever know.  To me, this is reverence.  I bow to the not knowing.

Geology is another way to view our place in time.  Canyons show the strata of millions of years, of grains of sand washed away by water carve a layering through millinea.  When I stand at the base of a canyon, or in the depths of the Columbia Gorge, I feel the presence of time beyond, above, below and through me.  This perspective gives me strength, a desire for equilibrium and the steadfastness of stone. Grounding 4:  (Sister) Circle Your Wagons There was a time where I had to pay for a circle of women to support me.  

I had just moved to Portland and was severely depressed, overwhelmed to the point where the thought of even trying to make friends felt beyond possible.  Besides, just telling my story brought me to tears, and there is no way to cultivate friendship without telling your story.

So I found a therapist--someone who wouldn't mind the burden of my tale--, a physician, a women's health practitioner, a chiropractor, and an acupuncturist.  And I paid them to do their jobs, helping me to heal and grow stronger, creating a supportive community in which I could transform, root and grow.

The connections that came out of that circle are still with me, and through them I have moved on to new circles of women, friends, mentors and students in my community.  When I'm flying free of any logical tether, I can call on my sisters and they will listen, respond, divine, and invariably I'll climb down from my monkey mind tree and get back in my body.  My sisters teach me not to worry, because there is nothing we need face alone.  

Several friends have helped me start The Moon Divas Portland Web Weaving and Gathering, as a way to get women together for this community, conversation and support.  Gathering makes us strong, and practice in community is powerful.  My yoga teacher once said, "practice makes you ready," and I know that through collective practice I feel more capable of navigating whatever comes my way.  You are welcome to join us!  Or come in virtually through the Moon Divas Certification courses, a place for your wisdom to shine, root and grow.

(Note:  The Moon Divas Guidebook has lots of tips and techniques for building and facilitating sister circles in your own community.  Download it for free by entering your email in the footer form below!) Grounding 5:  The Root Inside You Deep within every woman is a lifeline to all women who have come before, as well as every human born throughout history.  That's true power.  Connecting with your womb, its cycles and wisdom, can help to regulate your responses to the challenges facing you each day.  You are part of a lineage of strong and capable women.  Your womb can teach you how to access their strength.

The journey of womb knowledge has been a long one for me, and I am still so new to the lessons of this path.  But the Guidebook contains much of what I've learned, along with seasonal practices that can be incorporated into your personal rhythms.

There is a freedom that comes from tapping in to this source of knowledge, and a joy of kinship and discovery as old wounds of secrecy and shame are healed.  I begin and end each day with my hand on my womb, thanking my body for its profound, invisible work, and blessing my feminine source.  This is a beginning, as good as any, and grounding through the womb will bring a pattern of wholeness to your living that you may not yet feel possible.

I welcome you to that place.

Full Lunar Wisdom

Connect in.

Weave together.

Love it all.

Sometimes I think I fully miss the point.  As Rumi says:

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.

This life, this day, is a gift, one that is sweetest when shared. Yet, in spite of this, since becoming a mother, a woman in the world, solitude has been my greatest need.

A place apart from all voices, praises and demands.

A place of context and creation.

As a teacher, a partner, a daughter and a parent, solitude is truly a challenge to achieve.  This past year was the first since my children were born that I was able to experience sustained periods of creative silence, to fill up and make.  I was like a parched August earth drinking rain.  Slowly, my cracks began to close, my brittle nature soothed.  I became ready to connect again. And I have heard, many times, your yearning for connection.  You are a potent force, the many individuals who have contacted me seeking community through Moon Divas have changed my vision and my view.  I created the Directed Self-Study programs with the memory of my own days tied to home or work or other obligations, yet seeking always more.  

But we need each other.  We need to gather and share stories, to laugh and weep and vision, to pray and dance and eat.  To feel together the pulse of life and ask it, gently, what it wishes us to do.

Thus, new opportunities are here, created for the sole purpose of connecting women, building webs.  I've crafted options for divas new and experienced, curious, near and far, with income levels that begin at free.  I see so many women doing such amazing work in isolation.  What if we do this work together? There is a seat for you at the table.  Come, let us feast!  Information about new gatherings for Divas everywhere up on the homepage, with more to come.  I hope to see you soon.

Love--

Changing This Story

"If you keep telling the same, small, sad story, you keep living the same, small, sad life."
--Jean Houston

Yeah, sometimes we wish things could be different.

High hopes, best laid plans, good intentions rise and fall.

We're challenged, broken down, exhausted, taken to the edge, again.

And this, my friends, is where things get interesting, where we show, truly, what sort of humans we are.

Years ago my fiction mentor said you have to push characters to the back wall, that this is how we see what they are capable of.  Do they crumble and weep?  Do they take a stand?  What story rises from the ashes of a dream?  Who becomes more real as a result of their trials?

The stories we live are the stories we tell, and the people we become are shaped by the stories we speak right now.  

Let me be clear, I don't believe that we all create each and every experience we encounter.  I think that line of thought is as limiting as the idea that everything in our lives is preordained and set in stone.  Fate and free will have been argued since the beginning of philosophical discourse.  The answer, I feel--notice the distinction from "think"--lies somewhere in between, in a co-creative relational universe.  Where the patterns are larger than our knowing, yet we each are weavers.

So.  What story do you choose?  What story would your change? Art from The Woman and the Owl

"The truth about stories is they're all that we are."
--Thomas King

When transition occurs, our old stories--the ones that maybe we didn't choose, the ones we've lived unconsciously, the ones we thought we worked through, exorcised, buried--those old stories rise.  When we are vulnerable, worn out or stretched too thin, they creep back into being.  

This summer, the moving and timing of the move, the mothering, the work and inability to work, the financial strains of all of the above, these spinning arcs have unearthed my oldest story.  It is a story of grief, of not being good enough on every level--partnership, motherhood, work, creatively.  It is a story of lack, of not having enough, of self-denial.  Of exhaustion and illness.  It leaves me bereft and depressed.

I felt the pressing of this story's edges the moment we found out we couldn't buy our house.  Home is so important to me, roots are vital.  I spent the past four years turning a lawn into a garden, a house into a home, a neighborhood into a network.  I didn't want that to change. Four years later, the lawn was gone, replaced by medicinal herbs, native plants, fruit trees and vegetables. There was a morning in late July where I didn't want to get out of bed.  Where I couldn't be sure of anything except overwhelming exhaustion and sadness.  All of my transitions piled up on the floor around me, all of my old stories shouted in my ear.  I wanted to give up.  Everything.  Felt a deep panic, a crazy pain.

Then I told those old stories to fuck off.

I am not those stories any more.  Correction:  I don't need those stories any more.

I don't need to be sick to rest.  I don't need to be poor to be selfless.  I don't need to be taken advantage of to feel kind.  I don't need to struggle in each moment to prove my worth.  I don't need the worst to play out to understand my character.

Something struck.  My inner warrior, my ancestors, all of those grandmothers I've been promising to do better for.  My sense of self, my desire to LIVE DIFFERENTLY and belief that all is possible when we act with spirit and heart.  

So here I am.  Making plans for the future.  Nice to meet you, future. Strong and brave and free. My thoughts about some stuff have changed, now that I'm in fierce mode.  I've decided to offer a live version of the Moon Divas classes in NE Portland, starting September 10th.  More information will be up about this soon, but the biggest news is that these will be informal, casual, drop-in and by donation.  Really, this is to get the oxytocin flowing, the intentions built, and to craft new possibilities for the road ahead in a group of hilarious and powerful women.  I hope some of you will join us.

Also, the online programs are in the process of a revamp, and I should say that if you are a current or former student in the Moon Divas directed self-study programs, you are eligible to receive any program revisions for free.  I want you to be part of the community, forever and ever--or as long as you wish to be.  Revamping includes several live events and a new community space--more accessible and convenient for all, I hope.  All the details will be up on this website sometime before Labor Day.

And here's my third thought:  I am giving some time to my kids, in a relaxed and focused way, for the next couple of weeks.  Our summer schedule is our only cohesive time together, and so much of it has been eaten by moving and new space/family navigation, that we need to connect.  I can do this, take this time.  My new story says it's okay, that Fall is good for resuming motion, that the rhythms of planting and harvest are very much part of our psyche and to work with them is never a mistake.

Elsewhere, inspiration abounds in the quiet moments, and I so look forward to sharing all with you as it unfolds.  It has been an incredible year of building.  May the foundation remain.  May the structure grow in collaboration.

With you.  With love--