The Gift of Solitude

I have had the last two days alone. How beautiful solitude can be. My sons traveled to Sacramento to work on building frames for my younger son's upcoming art show. I was meant to go to a "No turkey" party the day after Thanksgiving and spend the night with my dear friend. I had been looking forward to seeing many old friends and connecting once again. Yet my emotional releasing has spread to include physical releasing also. Drip, drip of the nose, sore throat, fatigue and achiness has kept me put. My body is so gentle with me, asking me to sit quietly and be in the stillness. 


The clearing out of old emotions continued its program with me. Yesterday I watched three different romance movies on netflix's instant movies. I cried and felt the pain of not having a partner in my life. Realized that I have not experienced romantic love very much in this life. It was there for the first years of my marriage and a brief storm of it last year. Not so much in a 55 year old life. So the mind does the why thing that yields no answers. Why do I feel so deeply, want so much, dream so big, why have I not met a man who loves the way I love? Easy to ask these questions, not so easy to know that I have created all my experiences so why have I not loved myself the way I want to be loved?  I did not want to find that peace inside.....I wanted to avoid it with movies but chose ones that cracked open my wounded heart. I knew what I was doing. One, Bride Flight, was particularly poignant, what does a woman do when faced with caring for young children and staying in an unhappy marriage or losing her children and going to the love of her life. There were lies and secrecy and following religions that beat down all expressions of joy. It was a period piece set after WWI, yet so much remains true today. Women are so brave. They are the ones who are on the front lines of the pain, seeing the suffering of their kids and trying to make it right through their own sacrifice. (Not to exclude dads as I know that there are times when it is the man who is left to hold it together and explain why mommy has left but for the most part it is the women who hold the family together). What a species we are, so often not expressing what our hearts are feeling. Today's movie, Shadowlands dealt with unexpressed love. C. S. Lewis, the famous children's author, married late in life and had his heart cracked open by his wife's death four years later. He had lived an intellectual life  in the company of men that shielded him from navigating the emotions of the heart. His wife, Joy, allowed him to enter into that landscape of the heart that he had closed off from the time of his mother's death when he was a young boy. Together they entered in to the joy of love expressed. Truly we are love, it is our natural expression and all that has sought to repress it, all the ways that we have been taught to block it off to protect ourselves, have been lies. Hearts love.....it is their natural state of being. 


Many cleansing tears for me. Crying it all out, all the times and ways that I had not been loved in this life, the ways that I had not loved myself.  A friend said to me today, "I am glad that I can cry." I agreed as the tears are healing for our emotional bodies as well as for the earth. As we shed them, we water our mother and allow her a deep sigh. I watched and felt the struggles of the movie characters and knew their suffering as my own. And then the peace finally descends. I remember how surprised I was when I first discovered that at the bottom of the well of grief, there was peace. Who knew it was hidden there? I read a channeling from Peggy Black and her team of angels called Heal the Wounded Heart: http://www.therainbowscribe.com/healthewoundedheart.htm 
She speaks of the importance at this time on the planet to clear out our heart spaces to make room for that greater connection with the Divine. It is time to heal our wounded hearts. She gives a beautiful exercise to hold what you wish to heal in the chalice of your heart and set your intention to transform and release it. She suggests breathing into it and making the sound of it. This is very powerful . To give voice to the pain and allow it to release rather than remain locked up, this is the path to freedom.  Our mother's heart feels our pain so in releasing it, we allow her release and freedom. She then has less need for earthquakes and upheavals as we each clear our part of her density. The eclipse energies are asking us to do this work now, revisiting all the old lingering wounds that still cloud our hearts. I marvel at how the universe orchestrates the bringing to us of all that needs to be healed. 


Feeling the blessing of the love that I am stream in from the Creator. Knowing the blessing of dear friends who love me and see me for who I am. Loving that I see me these days and know my own beauty. Grateful for my children who understand me and cheer me on. My elder son and I spoke today and heard each other's hearts so clearly. Joy! There has been an agitation working in me as my soul works out this next step on my path. Knowing that there is a template of new relationships that my sons and I are creating and also knowing a change is on the horizon. Allowing myself to feel into it. Knowing that is the only way forward. 


I lay here and dreamt of this forest glade. I felt myself walking through it, marveling at the sunlight streaming through the branches. Loving the softness of the forest floor under my feet. I envisioned the first picture, the feeling of watching the sun as it rose through the clouds to announce the new day. I want these. I want a partner next to me to share this beauty. I want a community around me of folks who are co-creating with me.....art, gardens, raising children, animals, flowers. All of this I want. So I am dreaming it into existence. I will follow with inspired action where and when I am led but I know that the dreaming is the important piece. I want natural beauty around me. Being such a plant being myself, I need nature in close proximity. I want it feral and wild so that my heart can revel in its true nature as I dance and sing its vibration. For in truth, our hearts are wild places, full of untamed, dark and mysterious landscapes. We all long to dwell there, shivering with excitement as we walk the dark paths through the thickest growth, dancing with abandon in the moonlit spaces, floating effortlessly on the gentle waters, letting them carry us where they will.  


I have been blessed by this solitude, this journeying into my heart's space. Tomorrow all three kids will be here for a repeat of Thanksgiving dinner as my daughter has been away. I am glad that I did not lay guilt on her for making the choice to go away with her love rather than being here with us, glad to allow the breeze of freedom to blow through our relationship. (A new pattern from the command performances that my family of origin demanded.) We will open our hearts to one another and ride the next wave. We can create it all anew, how we interact with one another, how we let our hearts sing. Sing a new song and create a new day. 

Cloud Watching

There is always a bit of a tug for me when I leave Canada. The vibration is lighter there and easier to move through. This is the Peace Arch at the border crossing near Vancouver, BC. I love this saying: "Children of a common mother." It is great when we get it right......we are all children of our Mother Earth. We are all children of our Father Sky as we come from the stars. Our dear earth is ascending out of duality and into unity consciousness and we are going with her. As we move into unity within our own beings, we make the transition easier for her. For we are her and she is us. How beautiful it is to begin to recognize the connection to everything around us. Today is a new moon, falling right after the autumn equinox. There has been a palpable shift in energy these past few days. Have you felt the fatigue that often accompanies a download of new energy? I did and have felt overwhelmed with the vibration of love that is permeating the air. We are witnessing the shifting of an age. It is amazing. I feel reverent, grateful, exhausted, emotional. unsettled, expansive, excited, quiet......so many different feelings. I watch all move through me as the knowledge that we are NOT our experiences takes hold on deeper and deeper levels. We are great beings of light having experiences. We watch them come and we watch them go and feel such compassion and awe for our dear brave selves that waited in line to get a spot at this grand event.

I arrived on Orcas Island yesterday. The ferry was late and it was a wind tossed ride as stormy weather moved it along. It was evening by the time I found my way to the place I had rented and then busied myself with unpacking and settling in. Felt a bit alone, strange place, dark, couldn't find my flashlight to walk back out to my car to bring in my own down comforter that I travel with. (a girl has to have her own blankie!) Walked out blind as there was no moonlight with this new moon upon us. (found my head lamp in the car..yahoo, let there be light!) Listened to the wind in the trees. Felt my bravery in approaching new experiences and places. The night before I had been lying in bed in a motor home parked in a new friend's driveway. I laughed at myself....all the different situations that I have been in. I have learned to not question much, to simply follow guidance but at times I get a kick out of where I end up! I have learned to be comfortable anywhere and breathe into the home in my heart. I have let go of the need to know much, I follow the whiffs of inspiration, show up with an open heart and watch what happens. I had spoken to my youngest son last night and he sensed my aloneness. I said, "I am fine. It just takes me sinking into it and then I am in peace."

This is a tree from my last walk on Bowen Island. His coat of moss enticed me over and I found myself petting him. Ha, that was his plan all along! How clever of him to grow such a fine coat, so soft and luxurious. I love interacting with nature, talking to everything and listening to what they choose to share with me. I am so enjoying the feel of the woods here in the Northwest. Damp, deep and dark in a way. Fertile and feral also. Ferns and mosses in abundance. Deep shade and patches of sunlight. Bits of water splashing about. I can sense why my soul was craving this experience. So different than the bright rocks of the desert scape of Arizona and New Mexico or the hot inland valley of California with its dry scents of sage. These forests are speaking to what is fertile and wild in my heart. Someone wrote to me of my "fierce beauty" and I was struck by that phrase. Yes, I claim that fierce beauty around me. I claim it as part of me. The forests abound in this fierceness. A beauty that almost frightens as it portends a journey deep. The forests are allowing me access to new regions in myself. The shadows come alive and ask for appreciation and love. Isn't this where we are with ourselves? We are embracing all parts of ourselves, we are going deep to find all the bits that we have shut away, thinking them too dark, too awful, too sad, too silly, too selfish, too nasty to be seen by the light of day and certainly, not by anyone else. The forests show me that it is time to pet the dear child who felt she had to control things in order to feel a sense of safety in the world. They are showing me to love my heart that loves forever where it has once loved. I am embracing all the places that I lied to myself in order to present an acceptable face to the world. I am embracing all of me that I abandoned in trying to fit into a marriage, an educational system, family and relation- ships that did not serve me. I am forgiving myself for all the times that I so harshly judged myself. The freedom that flows once you do this! The sense of compassion for yourself arises in all its beauty. It is the sweetest nectar to taste. All guilt and shame can be embraced and allowed to flow on through. Old energies that no longer need to be carried. Think of all the emotions that we have stuffed into our bodies over the years! Is it any wonder that our bodies get ill and out of sorts? We were never meant to hold onto emotions, they were meant to be experienced and let go of. It is time to clean out the cupboards, dump all the past due items on the emotional shelves. Give yourself a good housecleaning and you will feel so much lighter! It is joy, pure joy. And your delight in yourself and your body for all that you have put you through......amazing! I cherish myself so these days. I love my body and give her whatever she desires and tell her thank you, thank you, thank you, for all that I asked her to endure. She is so beautiful, so cute! I get such joy from her and in her. I dress her in cute things, cover her in scented lotions and soaps, give her rest and wholesome goodies that delight her. Our bodies want appreciation just like everything else in this world. A friend was telling me of someone who was losing weight for the first time in forever not by her usual dieting but rather by speaking lovingly to her body. Eradicating her negative self talk about weight and using her words and thoughts to love every aspect of her body. She was delighted to find that the pounds began to fall away as her body responded to her loving treatment. It makes sense to me. Harsh gym routines, diets, etc never made sense. Let's stop the self punishment and begin the self celebration on every level.

Today I awoke to sunshine and stillness all

around. As the day unfolded, I realized that I did not desire to use the phone and after a bit on the computer this morning, it too was put away as I had no energy to answer emails or communicate with the outside world. This log bench out front called to me and it is where I spent much of the day. I had a blanket, a pillow and my wool wrap and I lay cloud watching. I was amazed at how quickly they shape shift. Small wisps would seem to be drawn to bigger masses, to join up. It felt like what is happening now as we are being drawn to our soul families, those whom are of like vibration. We are separating out from old duty relationships of family and friends that felt heavy, and flowing with the currents of energy to those with whom we have a high resonance. It was fun to watch it being played out and to feel a part of that play. I thought of the new educational systems that will arise. How cloud watching can be an activity that allows kids to expand their consciousness. Here I am at 55 years and I have never spent more than a little while watching clouds. Yet they have lessons for me. Every day, some part of nature is calling me to class, saying, "Look! This is important. This is what matters. Learn from us. Grow with us." I am listening. This island is a place of deep stillness and it has lessons for me. I move into the quiet, knowing that a rebirth is at hand. I am so blessed to walk this path of mine.