Hold up there Horsey...

Angela and Lori of WhiteBone held a two hour time block for those who have had issues in making their tools (drums and rattles) to come in and get some assistance with fixing them up. I went in on sunday, after facing the resistance of taking apart my drum and soaking the hide again in order to be properly re-attached. As Angela was assisting me on stapling the hide round the base, she asked about my part-time job. When i told her the conditions of it, her and lori reacted with some unexpected enthusiam, while angela affirmed "your spirits are takign care of you, Erica, your definately getting what you need". I told her i was still sitting with some dissappointment about losing the other opportunity which she quickly dismissed and said "well, thats just your ego, you told me back in january you wanted a job that would help you heal...Isn't it funny that when we get close to approaching the work of doing our healing how much we attempt to get ourselves busy with other things in order to distract ourselves out". Of course, my big brain and its talents at negotiation and analysis wanted to break that one open into a full fletched break down of the different conflicts arising in me, but instead i sat with the confusion that amounted in it's landing, a sure sign i have discovered in my own walk, on something truthful landing which i would need to sort out.

The entire drive home, i ran what Angela said through all the different layers of the process i was experiencing about this especially after what felt like some crystal clear clarity the previous day in my writing on needing to build the bridge from here to there, by making some real money. IT's so funny how one new drop in the pond when mixed with everything already brewing inside can actually help one change the complete direction of the water, as opposed to receiving the drop and allowing to see if it flows in the direction of the current it already finds itself in. It is true that at some point soon, i will have to make real money in order to build a pragmatic bridge from here to there, but angelas statement "you wanted to do that after what you've just been through" brought me right back to the real recognitions i have had about what part of the inner hearth needs attending at this time. When my ego attempted to dispute with the financial concerns, Angela again brought it back, reminding me how when we tend to the inner work, to bring it in alignment with the outer goals, its amazing how we are then in a place of attracting exactly what we need to grow internally while also rooted within what needs to grow externally.

Last night i re-visited the intentions for employment that i set upon my altar when beginning the search of considering returning back to my professional work amidst the layers of trauma i was feeling from the increased sensitivity of my spirit re-awakening within the dense traumatic environments of working front line with people knee deep in sometimes catastrophic suffering while my hands remained tied although placed in a position where i was supposed to help. It sometimes makes me feel like i was a bound and gagged prisoner, watching in horror at the many desperate souls that seemed to grasp at me, but all i could do was witness them in a powerless desperation. And so, what were those intentions of attempting to meet both the needs of my trauma and of my financial concerns?

"Yet at this time, my plea in moving towards these ends is to request your assistance in ascertaining safe, sustainable and abundant employment and money. That in receiving these I may be able to adequately meet, nurture and nourish the holistic needs of my daughter and I to essentially further me on this quest. I ask that the doors that may open to me in this domain come from a place of respect, honor and inherent integrity that while i be in that space to earn an income I may do so without feeling abused, anxious, scared or that will cause further lacerations to my being. I also ask that the income produced be abundant enough to feed us adequately, nurture our bodies, provide access to resources that nurture and heal our minds and spirits. That i may go to therapy, provide madison with opportunities for her own growth/exploration of passions and more importantly that all that is given to me serve to further my purpose and in doing so be a great act of reciprocity. Finally, i ask the terms of my employment allow me to remain whole at the end of the day, deepen my ability for self-care, give time for rest, creating and in line with the schedules i require to continue being a solid parent to Madison. I trust that as this request has been made from a pure heart with the highest intentions for the good of all that you will open those doors that need to open and keep ones closed that will not serve me".

It occured to me quite quickly, that although i am still unsure of what income will be produced the terms of the employment, mainly that i will be doing something i am rather well versed at, for a very small grassroots organization that is heavily connected to the surrounding community, with a population that is not severly traumatized, working out of my home at part time hours and flexibility of scheduling is way more than i had hoped for in ensuring that there are no further lacerations, the will give me time to work around madisons schedule and afford the time to rest, create and take care of myself. Had i been given the other position that would have challenged me in many ways intellectually and intrapersonally at full time hours, although the more than adequate income would be there, my efforts at healing and self care and more importantly nurturing the small space where new creative efforts have just begun to be born may have been compromised. The spirits of place, my ancestors, helping spirits and the great mother at large had answered my call. What an abundant gift and solidification of what im working through at present, what is being born and what is yet to come, after all these are all only spaces or moments in time occuring to heal what we have come from and help us grow where we are going.

Today i will visit the anchoring tree again, to serve another offering filled with gratitude for the gifts that have been given to me. In these moments on the path, where the journey crystallizes and a bunch of meaning comes out of it, serves to remind us of how much larger these little moments of our journey are, how the plan for us is always far bigger than we can ascertain or realize in the little moments we walk along the way and ultimately helps us renew our faith and trust in all that is, regenerating what may have been lost in the winters of our life, where the bleakness and the stench of death and decay of the parts of us that are falling away makes it hard to always remember, we are always being tended to. As osho has said in my card reading yesterday...

"We may feel there are too many things to do at once, but get bogged down in trying to do a bit here, a bit there, instead of taking one task at a time and getting on with it. Or perhaps we think our task is "boring" because we've forgotten that it's not what you do but how you do it that matters.

Developing the knack of being total in responding to whatever comes, as it comes, is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. Taking one step through life at a time, giving each step your complete attention and energy, can bring a wondrous new vitality and creativity to all that you do." ....

For now, this is the task before me <3

The Bridge from here to there...

I've lived in British Columbia for nine months now. A single mother that made the decision to move on welfare with no concrete options in sight, somehow managed to make it out here, unravel a bunch of trauma, clear away a bunch of anchored emotional debris, dis-engage from many self-destructive patterns, continue to search for a direction, get lost in falling debris, re-surface again. Things are generally peaceful when compared to the rough and wide tides of home in ontario, sure there is dark and lonliness, moments of isolation and feelings of being buried in a cave that was supposed to be wrought with waves of openness, excitement and discovery. But, there is a larger prescence within of being able to face and hold space for the unravellings of each new day, than there was back home, there is never feelings of homesickness or longing for the places of yesterday, just a bit of unpatience in how i want my current reality to unfold, a true opportunity to begin walking with the rythyms, or learning the spirit of the waters, which the ancestors told me would be held in the rattle i just made for White Bone.

I've managed to solidify a home, re-cover christmas homelessness, build a few relationships that sustain the pressing needs. I've stabalized my parenting, madison continues to grow more beautifully expansive and independant everyday, she makes more room for me and i for her, we too have found a rythym to our relationship. Mary jane has become an occassional visitor rather than a best friend and i seem to be really growing in areas of self-nurturance and respect and less dependant on external fillers. Within it all, there are hundreds of baby steps, all really important to the process of growth, recognition of personal truth, healing cyclical patterns, opening (safely) dense imprinted wounds. Yet in the troughs of the everyday shuffle and many times incredible struggle, the blue linings of my dreams remain, the crystal clear waters of which i am fearlessly surfing against the hot hot sun, a log cabin, perhaps a hippy store filled with all things cultural, beautiful and expansive, with some healing rooms alongside. A place where i sink into comfort, medicine for the soul, surrounded by everything that is beautiful to me and contains the very ingredients for outpouring everything that is beautiful within me as my own unique contribution to the world's healing. Sometimes the far away realities of those visions fill the present day with an emptiness, a head full of self slandering insults and a dreariness that makes it hard to get out of bed. But somewhere in there, there needs to be a bridge. Reclaiming the spirit is an incredibly lost and almost absent part of the puzzle, but amidst all our cravings when first re-acquainted to get completely lost in there, remains the truth of the walk back into a wholistic being, that it remains a part and just as the medicine wheels of virtually every indigenous culture on earth suggests, there are four components/faculties to our being, where our job often involves strengthening and nurturing the parts within these components that are broken, spliced or gaping and bringing it back into the whole, continuing to tend to the circle as it continues to turn and expose more and more blind spots.

The last few months, i have been visited by many crows. Almost every morning they would awaken me, sitting on the lamppost outside my suite, cawing their message. I see them everywhere and each time something important to my spiritual life has taken place in the last few weeks, one is near. When i made my drum and went for the initiation, Angela told me, that the attunement showed bird medicine and initiation.
An initiation, on the path of shamanism, is an event that challenges us in different areas that need to grow/heal with the purpose of calling us into our power and moving closer to our individual paths of truth and authenticity, unique to the experiences, patterns and conditions from which we are here to walk. Christmas homelessness was one of those initiations..would at the first sign of trouble on foreign soil run home to safety, let it serve as proof that the risk was not true to my path, or would i realize i had the power to walk through it powerfully and independantly, would i be able to take each painstaking step of anxious shame and desperation or would i run back to the way things used to be. Angela has said her theory of these initiations is that we can choose to respond as we would ordinarily do or we could rise up to meet the pattern in a new way, kiss it goodbye and release it onward. I arose.

But the bird medicine..well there were the crows yes...then there is the fact that my spirit name is White Owl and i am now only for the first time according to ThunderBear (the bearer of the name) inhabiting it's power now. Then of course there was the reminder by Lori at it's revelation that of course in my first class of shaman, i spoke about a journey where there were birds everywhere. Then there was a call from SeaBIRD Island band, an indigenous social work position, asking me to come in for an interview and provide two presentations to a panel in a social work ministry office. I was terrified, even intimidated..so much of what has comprised my traumas, my feelings of inadequacy, my fears of having a strong advocacy voice only to be silenced by a bunch of suits embedded in their ego-driven dramas of success and survival. Then of course there were the shames of my whiteness, evidence of my extreme privelege occupying yet another space of power where an indigenous face should be. Not to mention the very first prospect i was faced with a green ticket out of poverty row, a chance at a pension, a priveleged income, benefits, opportunities. There was the terror of course of meeting the interview, soon followed by the terror of what it would mean to do the job and concluding with the terror at what a life free of poverty might look like. First of all what would it mean for me not to have to beg for everything i had but perhaps even give back and secondly would accepting it mean i was throwing in the towel for everything i have claimed to stand for, for more than half of my life.

After some paralysis and adrenaline rushing, some contemplations of good excuses to back out, 5 very long conversations with people close to me, some seeking from those more knowledgeable then me, i set out amidst 36 hours of sleeplessness and mommying in between to prepare for the demands of those presentations. I had to break through several layers of buried knowledge to access the parts of me that knew how to work this process, re-cover some language and theoretical analysis that i was almost certain i had lost for good. After a couple breakdowns, some more paralysis and a little more breakdown, i began to put things down on paper. Throughout the process, after returning from a smoke, a little person spirit for the first time revealed itself to me with crystal clarity, only for a moment before running back to a room and evaporating into the silence. Was this a child you will help? suggested my mom, or perhaps one of your helpers. I was tooe exhausted to be as afraid as i usually am, another sign of the importance of this initiation.

Interview day came, i became nervous and wanted to cry again, as i bustled to get madison to school, ensure i had all my materials and make last minute corrections. On the drive over, my heart palpitations intensified, i wanted to back out, instead i turned the music down and talked aloud to the traffic, to the silent car, to the pretend audience that was hearing why i was qualified. It seemed to calm me and give me a little more grounding. I hit grid locked traffic, continued to talk, arrived at the ministry office, and as some panic and old resnetful feelings began to rise to the surface i took a deep breath, gathered my things and walked in. I would wait ten minutes before being introduced to the panel, four women, all white except one. I began by speaking from my heart, before confidently settling into my power, speaking with a sense of power, knowing and authority on the matters i spoke about, answering their questions with an authentic truthfullness but a sense of confidence, relaying my presentation earned of 36 hours of sleeplessness that never got a voice. I left the meeting feeling i had met the challenge before moving on to the second interview with the literacy council, completely unprepared but having compassion on myself for it and feeling as if i almost most definately blew that interview.

Another week of crazy anticipation passed. Midway, the ministry called to ask a few more questions and to double check references, 2 painstaking days later i heard from the references they had been called and gave exquisite responses. I knew i had the job in the bag, friday morning while anticipating their call, i went easter shopping for madison and as i confidently walked along my morning in the burning warm sun, began to dream up all the ways the newfound spring of wealth would be used, all of them productively of course and in recognition of the things given to me, all of it acting as a bridge from here to there. Until of course within 30 minutes i was informed i didnt get the position..that it was a "dragrace and i lost only by a hair" but with a request to forward on my resume a genuine beleif in my gifts and the skills i brought to the table. I called mom immediately and had a little cry, before ten minutes later being contacted by interview number two to be informed that position i had gotten.

A crack in the foundation opened up and i had fallen in, self-depreciating thoughts ran wild again, energy drained from my body like a vortex magnetically pulling it into the earth. I was lifeless and sad, despite the recognition i had another position for the interim, one that initially i was more interested in, or the comfort of cosmic's package that had brought me a wellspring of joyful emotion just a few short moments before. I was confused by all the synchronicities that had visited with this call and all the ways it intersected with my initiations, did i once again misread? I had so much to be grateful for how could i feel so devastated?

It was a sunny day, but i couldnt face her. I pre-occupied madison, had a visit with maryjane, ate some mcdonalds and turned to the usual coping mechanism, movies in bed, the perfect distraction from everything that for the moment i just couldnt face.

This morning when i awoke, i still didnt feel like facing the day. I called mom and gave her a brunt of my frustration at constantly being poor. She listened, just like i needed her to. So yes, i did meet the initiation by interacting with this ministry that once tore me down and that once i gave my power too with a sense of self-assured but still truthful power and confidence and for the very first time was recieved gracefully for. But this initiation also opened up a bunch more conflicts, questions long standing dilemmas. My friend michelle reminded me through this process, how this process was very much about the process and not the outcome, which appears to be true, not only on the level that it happened but also in the way of what it opened up as a result.

Is this the time, i interface with my sense of poverty conciousness? Is the work at this part of the journey to realize that at the root of my poverty which up until now has been seen as a radical revolt against all the things in the world that seek to destroy us and the great mother, really resisntantly so an intersection of self worth tied up with a bunch of fear about stepping out in my power, in ways that will ultimately also give me more power in navigating through this world, retaining the things i need and bridging the here to there. Brdiging the poor, optionless, waiting for self care handouts, to having the ability to attend to these needs and ultimately move toward that inner vision that continues to burn but is always so far from my reach. What always stands in the middle... money.

But what would that mean for my principles, my values, my radical and somewhat anarchist political stances against the system, the rape of the world, the disposeable attitude toward humanity, the injustices in almost everything we do and in the ways that we do it. Wouldnt me going through the motions for a time in an effort to bridge these divides make me no different than the people i have resented for the dammage they have created? Or does it remain a key part of my lessons, growth and opportunities for actually creating what i need to create in the world? If i go forward will i lose myself there? will i become too passionate again at the expense of what is the founding aim? Will i create more dammage along the way and will i be able to live with myself?

These are the questions my life is beckoning be lived at present, again, i need to search for the right answers with the best place being in the ways that help me see more clearly the inside...