If we root deep into wonder what do we find? Digging through the detritus, can we allow the seed to unfurl its etiolated form?
In the cocoon of the womb it is eternally winter until the spark of wonder ignites the growth of potential. Where can I go from here, the seed asks. What exists beyond the darkened embrace of holding?
I have been sitting long with potential. Inside the womb I stir its seeds. For decades, or perhaps a lifetime and more, I have been adding seeds, so many seeds. They pile upon each other, waiting to be sowed into their own pockets of humus. Grow me! I hear their voices, near pleading. It is time.
Yet time keeps its own clock, and here in the slow breath of winter I find wonder daring to defy the cold seconds of stasis. Who says movement needs the spark of spring? Wonder asks me to figure out the mechanisms of trust. It asks me who holds the pendulum from swinging and who releases it?
The chimera of the imagination showcases its magic with ease. Look! It shouts. Can you believe me?
I have catalogued and filed all the forms I can capture. “You could belong here.” I play with a plot of reality. “And you here.” “What if we wove you together? What might grow out of this union?”
And as I play in this liminal space I find myself dancing beyond the boundaries. Pushing through the compacted surface, I stretch the daring tendrils of this life I want to nourish and show them the light to have a look around. “What do you think?” I ask them. “Can we dance together in the sun?”
In dreams at night I explore belonging. Often, I return to school to discover the outcast searching for acceptance. In my quest for knowledge inside the confines of the walled classrooms I encounter the angst of rejection, over and over again. Belonging becomes possible only when I step outside and become immersed with nature. Here I am held, without inhibition, in the open arms of a mother-teacher who offers no judgement. Unconfined, I discover I am connected to the magic of existence.
Is this not true for all of us? Consider, for a moment, the irritable child struggle to learn inside a walled classroom who is then let outside to run and play without restraints, limitations, or conditions. If you can no longer remember that child as you, allow yourself to become that inner child. Step outside with wonder. Explore. Interact. Discover. Uncover. Open. When we find a safe place in nature to be ourselves, transformation occurs in a manner that brings us closer to the joy of belonging and acceptance.
Infinite possibilities for joy occur when nature is not a forced interaction, but an opportunity for individual exploration. Nature does not ask us for conformity, but for the space to expand and grow. In nature, the strange mingles with the expected. In nature, beauty and the beast coexist as equal partners, and hierarchy becomes a web of interdependence.
There is both science and metaphysics that come into play when we recognize our place of belonging to the natural world. In nature, our heart rates regulate to the mother-pulse of Earth, our emotions become more grounded, and our bodies destress. This is all scientific. We are of nature, and being intimately connected to nature is essential to our wellbeing.
Nature, though, also awakens a deeper sense of connection that moves into the metaphysical. It offers us an opportunity to explore the magic of wonder that expands beyond the sensory. When we open ourselves to the mysteries of the natural world, we realize we are infinite beings playing in a landscape of infinite dimensions. We look to the sky and find our origins. Beneath our feet, we feel our roots. Our breath weaves the air of life through our lungs and back out into the invisible expanse to find another body to nourish. Our mouths feed upon the cells of primordial life, and our bodies repurpose the nutrients into new growth. Sometimes, when we are still enough, we can observe the dance of the untethered spirit, reminding us of the temporary force of gravity. When we feel into the universal hum of life, we can feel the web of light that connects us, always.
Photo taken during the medicine walk at the beginning of the day
In the days before my “nonprofit sanctuary building retreat day,” my co-facilitator, Heidi, and I found feathers everywhere. The banded blues and blacks of bluejays and the curled wisps of downy undercoats fell repeatedly along our paths, and in my case the tail feather of a yellow-shafted flicker in the middle of my driveway. The golden center unmistakable. Some things are meant to be noticed.
My yellow-shafted flicker feather
The invitations had been sent out about two months prior, and almost immediately responses came back, most stating enthusiastically that they were definitely going, or would try to. Yet, life has a way of taking over, and by the time Saturday came we were expecting only four more. That made six of us for the day, with one more, my husband, who appeared periodically. Some things are just meant to be.
For those of you who know me through the mystical world that I walk through, you will know that I have a rather intimate relationship with the hexagram. Not in any nefarious way, as that is religious dogma’s fear of mystical symbols that predate even the written word. The hexagram is the symbol that brought me to Sue, my spiritual mentor, and is the symbol that came as a labyrinth calling in the Warriors of Light in my book series. It is a sacred geometrical alignment of unity and balance. Combining the (triangles) elements of water (feminine) and fire (masculine), as well as earth and air. Its elemental form creates a six-pointed star. In the center is one more, not always visible point, representing the soul as an aspect of the divine. On Saturday, I had my 6 + 1 = 7. A complete hexagram star.
Some things are meant to be, and as the weekend played out I became more and more convinced that Sue was orchestrating, at least in part, from beyond the veil.
Our magical sunset
So let me tell you about the night before. Heidi and I arrived at the lake at 7pm. Dusk was settling in fast, and the setting sun haloed the hills of the (goddess) land in an aura of gold. Into the cove we walked to watch the alchemy of earth, fire, air and water.
We went to bed early, Heidi to a downstairs bedroom, and I to the upstairs loft. It took me hours to fall into sleep, and when I did I was woken abruptly by the sound of the fire alarms going off. It was 11:01am. Heidi, downstairs, noted the same time, also now fully awake.
We gathered with racing hearts to assess the situation and could find nothing amiss. Climbing back into bed with my mind restless, it took a long period of time to find sleep again. Shortly after I did, the fire alarms went off. It was now 1:11am. Heidi, downstairs, also noted the time.
As we once again gathered to assess the situation, we become increasingly convinced that the alarms going off with three ones each time had not been accidental. Perhaps we were just not meant to sleep, at least not restfully. Heidi did not wake again until about six in the morning, I, on the other hand, woke once more, this time to the persistent hooting of an owl. I was too tired to look at the clock, but the messenger was noted.
The ensuing day unfolded as it was meant to. The six, plus occasional one, shared thoughts and ideas. The right questions were asked, and I had some, but not all of the answers. By the end of the day, lots of pieces of the puzzle were scattered about, but it had yet to be assembled. Our mission was to work on a name, tag line and logo, and we had aspects of each, but the whole was still illusive. Earlier in the day, during a medicine walk, I had heard this phrase inside of my head, “Surrender to not knowing, that’s when the magic happens.”
Tired and packing to go home, I didn’t know what to think of it all. Everything still felt amorphous and uncertain. I was grateful for the efforts of the gathering, but I wasn’t sure what to make it. So I let it settle and be. I went home and unpacked, watched some TV, read, and then went to bed. Almost immediately, I fell into a deep slumber.
At 1:31am, I woke abruptly. My shoulder was aching and so I rolled on my back and started to think. I thought about the pieces from the previous day and what was missing. I thought about how when I had read my vision narrative for the sanctuary, one of the participants had noted there was something missing, yet I could not articulate it during our day together. And then it occurred to me.
Wonder.
How could I have forgotten wonder, which had always been central to the vision, but had somehow not been articulated in its story. And then the name came to me. And then the tag line. I started piecing together an image for a logo, realizing the components were there, laid before me, I just needed to put them together. I thought about the book I had recently read even though, as my husband said, I had “hated” the movie, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. Suddenly, I realized who my target audience was in a way that felt more concrete.
And I thought of another message I had received during the medicine walk after I had heard the call of a loon, “Let go of expectations. Anything is possible when you open the doorway and walk through.” After years of holding this close to my heart, I think I had just walked through the doorway with my dream.
It was not yet 7:00am in the morning, I had reached over to grasp the teapot, about to fill it with water to brew a cup of chaga, when I looked out my kitchen window and saw the owl staring back at me. It was perched on the lowest branch of the hemlock just beyond the far side of the pool, a couple of yards away. An “Oh my god,” or something close to it, escaped from my mouth is I put down the teapot and grabbed the phone.
My morning visitor, a barred owl on a hemlock
There was no need to panic. The owl had no plans elsewhere, in fact, it was quite content to spend its morning in the copse of hemlocks, peering into my soul window, and occasionally onto the forest floor for a sign of breakfast. Or would that be dinnertime of an owl?
The barred owl casually hunting for a meal
One thing was certain, I had not been expecting a visitor of night to show up at my backdoor that morning. And, for a bird known for its eerie call that sounds an awful lot like “Whooo Looks for Yooouu?” my visitor never made a peep.
The barred owl was silent during the entire visit
For more than an hour, the owl hunted silently the small woods in my backyard, mostly staying in the same hemlock, and quite frequently peering into my soul window directly through into my eyes.
It was a bit unsettling, but felt like a gift
If you have never stared eye-to-eye with an owl, perhaps you will get a feel for what it’s like through these photos. There is a reason why owls have, throughout time, been associated with darkness and magic. A reason why they are associated with wisdom, secrets, and symbols of what is hidden and perhaps needs to be revealed. Every bit of lore associated with owls becomes unsettlingly clear when you stare eye-to-eye with one.
And then it was back
Since my morning visitor (who appeared again at the end of the afternoon), was a barred owl, I found myself starring into eyes blacker than night set inside a tawny white face with a yellow beak. It’s rather like looking into a sky devoid of stars (planets, satellites, and moons), but that doesn’t exist. Hence the feeling of otherworldliness. It is no wonder owls are associated with magic and mystery.
So much magic wrapped into one form
When I looked at my visitor, I saw my dear and departed friend and mentor Sue with her cloak of owl feathers, I saw my maternal grandmother, and I saw Athena encased inside one magnificent form that more than once I felt like hugging.
My visitor definitely had a huggable quality
Let’s face it, owls are rather adorable, albeit imposing figures. I have a tendency to want to hug pretty much any form of wildlife I see and it takes a fair bit of willpower not to. Instead, I settle with filming and taking photos, when possible. Yesterday brought two opportunities to do so, as the owl appeared again late in the afternoon, just after I had settled onto the sofa to work on my manuscript. It was nearly 4:40pm, and after typing a few lines in book three of the Warriors of Light series, in which perhaps not coincidentally, the barred owl makes a reappearance as an important messenger, my friend reappeared. This time, outside my living room window. Like déjà vu I looked out the window to find the same barred owl starring directly into my soul. Forget the crossout, I was now convinced.
Photo taken in July at the Rachel Carson Wildlife Preserve in Wells, Maine
It’s nearly the end of summer, and almost three months since my last blog post. Now and then I thought about stopping to write, but I abandoned the idea for various reasons. During this fiery season, Life has wrapped her joy and loss around me in a shroud that has caused a fair amount of processing and examination. I suspect I am not alone. We are each trying to navigate this labyrinth of uncertainty where kindness is woven into cruelty as love reaches out her arms to marry hate. Asking, perhaps in each moment, how much can be held at once.
This yogi meditating troll can be found at the Southern Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, Maine.
My individual journey this summer has led me to an acceptance without resignation. My eagerness to push my long-held dream of creating a wellness sanctuary in nature into reality has caused me to face disappointments and realizations that initially felt monumental, but which were in reality merely pauses and opportunities to reassess and redirect. In early August, the month of my birth, I lost a beloved canine companion, Zelda, and was pushed out moved on from a soul-crushing job.
Zelda enjoying her final nap at the lake that she loved
There is a period of unease, an adjustment to unsettlement, that comes with a series of sudden changes, especially unexpected ones. We learn during these times what forms and defines us. We learn what needs to release before the rebuilding begins. I am getting used to the gifts of a quieter house as I scrub away the stains and welcome in the autumn air. I am finding comfort in the gift of solitude, and this time offered for letting go the hold of unfounded fears.
Sunset, Edgecomb, Maine
There is a profound peace the rises when one sits with potential. The stirrings of magic that bubble up through the strata of self is nothing other than joy. Suddenly the palette becomes infinite, the canvas without borders. The human mind, its only limitation. Or maybe it’s not in fact the mind, but its emotions. Letting go of the known and embracing the yet-to-be-defined is not without entanglements. Yet we do not go through life without support even when we believe the structure has collapsed.
A monarch butterfly outside my front door
The losses that have come along my path this summer have not been catastrophic, but they have nudged me towards reclaiming my origin story. They have brought me back to residing with my truth and not something that has been manufactured out of fear. The summer has gifted me with the opportunity to open to something that is still being defined. The imaginal cells are stirring, they are finding bonds, they are starting to form their potential. As always, life it is to-be-continued.
The Buddha in the herb garden beside my front steps
Madness has taken over the country I call home, but there is peace to be found amid the chaos. Humans are not strangers to chaos because we are most often its creators. Nature inherently seeks balance, but human nature is its primary upsetter. How utterly ironic that our highly evolved brains push us towards disharmony all in the name of supremacy. This quest for supremacy churning out cycle after cycle of battles for dominion over ourselves, other species, and our planet, which is not just ours.
Yet, She endures.
In the soft hours of mourning I pause with her presence. The cat I am far too attached to takes advantage of the moment to cocoon herself between my thighs and belly as I watch a small orange slug, that is not really orange, but more the colors of an oak leaf transitioning from summer to fall. Its glistening body is horned like a young goat and in this pause I find its beauty. Curled into a half-heart around the edge of an oregano leaf in this garden of herbs and wild weeds that seek only coexistence, the slug defies gravity. Or seems to.
Beyond this small patch of earth that sits below my front step, the male cardinal that built a nest in the lilac sits on a branch of a maple singing his sermon of the day. How glorious he is to behold with his coat of red and his beard of black haloed in summer’s green. Yet I know he is more than that. I have held the fallen feather of his kin up to the sun and witnessed the full spectrum of light. But, he knows this too. Listen to him.
His mate is in the peach tree is gathering a meal. Equally lovely in her understated tawny hues she wears red on her beak, the crest of her head, and threads its hues through her tail and feathers as a reminder of balance. She is earth, fire, air, and always water. Water because it is a feminine element. And each of her feathers holds the same spectrum of light as his.
The cardinals are not the only birds singing to the mourning and gathering food. The phoebes who nest under the peaked roof of my unused front door are busy doing the same. Dedicated to the tasks of the day they provide a chorus with the finches, nuthatches, and chickadees. Circling the clouds, the resident falcons calls out for breakfast and I take in the scent of the ocean from the sea roses before I head inside for mine.
A sign (not mine) from yesterday’s “No Kings” rally in Concord, NH
It is likely my personal experiences are not so different, in some ways, than yours. I don’t think there is a person who exists without having experienced, to some degree, the effects of narcissism. We all know a bully, and perhaps we have been the bully at one point. We all have the capacity to harm, to allow harm to occur to others, and to cling to false truths. What factors inform our lives shape who we become and the values we cling to. We don’t have to be psychologists to examine our lives and the effects we have on others, as well as the effects they have on us. Sometimes, though, it helps to have a professional’s perspective.
For example, it didn’t label my childhood experiences as abusive until my therapist slipped the word “abuse” into one of our sessions. I was in my mid-thirties. In some ways, it is shocking, even alarming, that it took me so long to come to this realization. I am sharing my story because I believe it is far more common than it should be. And, I think my personal experiences help me to understand my frustration with people who celebrate narcissists who are cruel and heartless, and who we sometimes elevate to the role of leaders who would be kings.
I lived with a would-be-king growing up. My childhood, adolescence, and young adult years were informed by his wishes, and I learned to comply at an early age. To obey, and even praise his rule of law. I knew if I did not, there would be consequences, often physical ones. It didn’t matter (although it did), that his rules were often illogical, often cruel, and always controlling. “Don’t flush toilet paper if you just go pee.” “Don’t close doors, not even your bedroom or the bathroom.” “Don’t grow your fingernails and never paint them.” “You can’t ride in the car with me without conversation.” “You must show interest in what I do.” “You must call me your father and refer to your birthfather by his name only.” “You must do what I say.” Always there were consequences if not. The strong hand grasping my throat, silencing my words into submission. Fingerprints left on skin. The booming voice racing the heart back to fear.
But I never knew this was of living was really not okay until someone outside of his reign told me. A professional I could trust. You see, living under the rule of narcissism often comes with complicity. My mother was, and still is, his greatest sycophant. I also lived with her words. “You are so lucky.” “We should be grateful.” “He saved us.” “You have a good childhood.” “He feels bad when you don’t call “dad.” “He gets sad when he feels left out.” “He had done so much for us/you.” Etc, Etc.
And so I believed all of it. Every word of hers became my truth due to my own need to be loved and accepted. To feel secure and safe, even when I was anything but. I elevated the narcissist who ruled my life to the statues of hero and savior, because that’s who he was in his eyes, and in the eyes of my mother, the person who I worshiped, loved, and adored above everyone else.
I wonder how many people have stories like mine? Different circumstances, but similar effects? When I was a teenager, I witnessed the harmful effects of narcissism and bullying through my peers. Who has not? Those that wanted to feel more special than others inflicting their cruelty and dominion to be elevated in social status. The sycophants who followed their lies and took them for truth so that they would not become the bullied. So common.
I believe our personal and collective traumas allow us to perpetuate these patters without realizing how harmful they are. My own mother, when confronted by me with evidence, averted her gaze to the window and asked, “Where was I?” How frustrating and heartbreaking those words were to hear knowing she was there, always there, to bear witness. Yet, she carries the burdens of her own traumas. I know this, because they informed my childhood too. I grew up with her personal stories of abuse and took her wounds into my body. By default, I became her confidant, as well as her protector. As did my sister.
What child does not love their mother beyond logic? And so I use my personal stories and trauma during these challenging, global times to try to understand what is seemingly beyond logic. On the other hand, I allowing limitations to what I will tolerate. I will not condone atrocities and complicity. I will stand up for what is right and be a voice, when I am able to, for those who need one. I will move continue to move through discomfort to find courage despite the trauma of consequences I still hold in my body. I do this, because I know I am not alone. There are people, much braver than I, battling for truth, kindness and unconditional love.
I was born in the year of Roe V. Wade at the tail end of the Vietnam War. It was a time of peaceful protests infused with the idea of free love. The tide in America surged towards inclusivity and acceptance. The equal rights amendment had just been codified into law, and people were experimenting with ways to return their connection to the land, and to a spiritual force that moves beyond the structure of religion.
The wave of free love ebbed when the ’80s rolled in with the Reagan era. A war on drugs commenced, never to be won, and conservatism washed across the country. I am no historian, but I am interested in our collective stories and how we move through time informing each other. I am interested in the driving forces of opposition and polarity; the struggle for power and control when freedom and love take hold. When I turn through the half-century of my life thus far on Earth, I observe this rise and fall of tides, noticing the contraction that follows expansion, as I wonder about the years ahead yet to be formed.
Never before have I felt such instability in our collective movement. In this time of conservatism that attempts to throw us back to a time long before my birth, I feel all that precedes it in a rise of our chaos. How much unease can the individual and shared body endure?
We are wise enough to know this is a tactic, but yet we are ignorant enough to think (in part) that somehow lies are truth. That equality is a ruse when a would-be-king who is an adjudicated criminal, a rapist, a heartless narcissist, and the very antithesis of all that Jesus Christ stood for, could in fact be our savior. Even though all evidence points against this. Why do we hold fast to illusions? What pulls us into the blind path of sycophants? Why do we turn outward for security, instead of inward, especially when the prophet cares not for the lambs who follow him?
Will we ever learn? Is this our moment of reckoning? This apocalypse playing out in rapid time before us, overwhelming all sense of stability and connection will either lead to a cycle of dystopia or an opportunity to return to our origins.
Because I like to follow history back before it was history, I favor the theory of the goddess cultures as a time of harmony and true connection. As an empath, I find home among the ancient sacred landscapes that honor the Mother as divine, not without the father, per se, but elevated to the status of holy ground. Inside these holy grounds, these mother-wombs, I find my sense of connection to the self as part of a whole. I feel the light threading through life in a web, now severed, but repairable.
It is this knowing that propels me towards hope. Sometimes we must cleanse a system of its debris before we can get its parts working again. I use this metaphor, that feels like truth, in my Warriors of Light series. When the warriors follow the broken lines of light in Earth’s body they arrive at the heart of a giant named Albion, only to discover that his heart is also the heart of Earth. They are one and the same. He is the yang to her yin. One cannot exist without the other to be whole.
I am not sure why we have collectively resisted the divine feminine energy that threads through all of us, and why we have tried to dominate (and thus destroy it) in our shared mother, Earth, for so long, but it has become painfully clear at this present moment we are destroying ourselves. If we continue along this path, we will not thrive. It’s likely, if we survive, it will be just barely, and only a select few. One man’s quest for kingdom is not about sustainability and mutual thriving. Instead, it can only lead to a further severing of our connection from all that makes us whole.
This is a time of reckoning. It’s a time to reflect upon the self and the role you individually play in this life that is shared. In this time of climate crisis and political upheaval, we must, if we are to endure, dig deep into the debris and spark the light back to life. We must thread it back to a place of unity so that we can, collectively, begin to repair what we have torn apart.
I have neglected my writing for the majority of spring. This blog, untouched since the end of March. Only a few more words have made their way into the pages of my two manuscripts, but I have not been entirely fallow, nor has the life around me. In my backyard, “No Mow May” has turned into a meadow filled with color and noise. During the day, the pollinators dance among the whispered seeds of dandelions before they sink their bodies into the violet petals of self-heal. Bees, so many bees, emerging out of this wild yard with pockets of gold tucked into their hind legs. When the sun hides behind the hemlocks, the wood frogs take over, and dusk becomes a mating song.
In the front yard, the sea roses have intoxicated June, and me, pulling us into summer almost too suddenly. Spring always manages to run ahead of me, overwhelming, but it is still my favorite season. When I lose hope in humanity, I turn to the garden and search its wonderland.
It can be difficult to slow down when nature propels us towards the sun. I can feel the effects. Fatigue urges a pause, and so I sit down to write. Finding the centering solace of words. We create not to produce, but to come home. Our art is our individual origin stories. It brings us back to our essence. Here we find ourselves, again.
In my yard, nature sings our shared origin story and spreads wide the senses in a canvas of color, sound and scent that brings my body to a place of homeostasis when I allow the stillness of presence. It is the time when our Mother welcome us back into her warm embrace to find our center.
This is not an easy time in our shared history, but few times have been easy since we lost sight of our origin stories and began to cling to the heady thrust of power and greed. Rapid growth is not always advantageous, in fact, it rarely is. Anything that disrupts the natural rhythm of life creates chaos. This is when our origin stories become dystopians of corruption. Through a screen smaller than a slice of bread we can watch the world falling apart, sending our senses into overload. The heartbeat becomes erratic, the breath held shallow before it is released. That is no way to thrive.
Yet, we cannot entirely escape it, even if we turn off the device. We are, unavoidably, a part of it. One strand of the web weaves into the over, even if the strands are made from inorganic elements. We cannot escape our connection, but we can change the density of it. When adjust the force of its pull and free ourselves of at least some of its tangles, it is easy for us to access the center. There is no better time than spring to sort through the false trappings of life and find our way home again. It can be as simple as bringing our bodies with all of our senses engaged back to the earth. One bare foot, followed by the other, leading us back to our origin.
Order this exquisite book if you do not yet have a copy.
I recently ordered the two books by Robin Wall Kimmerer that I have not yet read, Gathering Moss and Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults. I had not known about the latter book, which she cowrote with Monique Gray Smith (illustrated by Nicole Neidhardt) until about a week ago when I started digging more deeply online into the wisdom of Kimmerer. The fact that she’s adapted her masterpiece, Braiding Sweetgrass into a manual on reciprocity for young adults has me particularly excited because the sanctuary I am working to create will have a focus on facilitating a connection between the natural world and youth.
Every time I listen to, or read, the words of Robin Wall Kimmerer I become the rapt student. Life distills into essence through her narratives and a feeling of coming home overwhelms my senses. More often than not, I find myself weeping. And here is why: Even though our modernized world tries to rush us towards unfettered “progress,” our cells are continually pulling us back to their origins. They beg us to become rooted into our collective Mother. They plead with us to come home. There is an undeniable longing that awakens when we (re)learn our origin stories, and no one conveys them more eloquently than Kimmerer.
She is master storyteller. Kimmerer’s gift for weaving indigenous and scientific wisdom into compelling narratives draws the listener/reader in so deeply everything else disappears. Her words tug at the threads of DNA that join the solitary life into the web of all lives. One cannot help but feel the longing for reconnection. I am not holding onto an illusion that I can do it perfectly, but if I can nurture a space where the natural world exists in harmony with its human visitors—who are, after all, children of the land—in a way that threads reciprocity into one small piece of our world perhaps a bit of this longing will turn into joy.
The Light Behind the Story 