The Lady in Waiting...

On that distant shore I saw her there. With bold, bronze and wild hair, her strength coupled with gentleness was wild and untamed. She stood strongly in her power, yet with this serene gentleness exuding from every pore. No hint of fight or struggle, no hint of passivity in her own walk, she stood there, gently awaiting that I take notice. When did you become this lady in waiting? A passive receipient of life's noble wisdoms, like a feather flapping in the wind hoping it lands somewhere dry. Instead of standing in your gentle strength and working with the energies of the cosmos to bring about what you deserved, you await the gem trader with a keen eye and a hopeful heart, curious about your divinity and wise enough to see you. That is no different then the pristine princess of old who knows not her power but only her vulnerability. Your vulnerability is part of your power, a tender understanding heart lives within you, wise and seasoned and able to differentiate the intercomplexities of what we call love. Yet in your humility, you deny your own answers and wait to be shown, slowly discarding your hard won wisdom. You are more worthy than you could ever imagine. Your partnership is too mighty for the weak at heart, it will take a strong counterpart to match your prescence in the world. There are always choices as to how you can define your existence. You can choose to see yourself as the one that is always left behind, or you can choose to see yourself as a magical potion, continuously refined by the alchemical elixir of fire, building, destroying and re-building itself, like an act of holy purification. That perhaps that hearts that jump in only to run too quickly can not stand the heat of your transformation, or are not strong enough to stand with you in the fire. Forgive them and bless them on your journey. Trust in your own divinity and your full human expression. That the true path to God is through the acceptance and permission of your humanity to flow like an untameable river igniting and putting out many fires along the way. It is through this passion you become yourself. But most importantly, don't ever, ever forget who you truly are..You deserve this.

untitled

A sea of sadness continues it's timber movements.. in and out the waves continue to peel a silent sigh in it's waking slumber it calls out to me. Calleach showed me the lost baby, picked it from the thorn bushes and placed it deep into my chest the exhaustive coughs of neglect creates pits of dust in my throat My mouth opens and a sound can be heard a distant melody that brings with it the sounds of yesterday and with it a leaky heart that mourns its own death They gave me a new heart in order to prevent the re-occuring pain but grief continues to bleed form me as if i was made from a well of sadness Imbass work, Imbass work...there is still something that drives me away from you Not with any worthy distraction of course, but rather a frustrating fixated gaze at the reasons your parts dont seem to work Claire left in the North, her path called her elsewhere she said, that she still loved me dearly and hoped to meet me on the other side Abandonment and betrayal came to visit, i denied their existence with every attempt to protect the glass house i had built i defended her reasons Most days i still feel numb, she's in there somewhere in the background just not a memory i can contend with just yet. I met a man that spoke in many ways to me he told me of great things and spoke of new ways of being i had only envisioned in my journeys there was that chance we might fall down the rabbit hole, get drunk of the love of abandon and find ourselves somwhere in between. His capacity to manage multiple relationships was too much too heavy a burden to carry - i was the extrapolated part perhaps it wouldnt be so bad if he did something with the walls that keep him from remembering the way he felt at least that way i would feel it was worth the moment of unveiling.. protect your heart they tell me.. but how i needlessly wonder, was it not just yesterday we had to chisel the iron lock off its pump and allow the blood to continue to pump? Yet still within it all, my voice has slowly risen to the surface out of the broken depths of ursula's buried shell find your song Calleach said while making her stew of melody find your song... but how? but how? i asked find your song, find your song, find your song.

The Waves are rocking...this boat is still afloat..

My heart is open. Painfully so. It desperately wants to close and quickly. Repeat dissappointments make me question - why keep it open? My mind whispers it's intellectual knowings..."People pass through leave their gifts and keep moving"..."Stay open, stay open...let these experiences move through you like the tides of the rivers from rocky and strong to gentle and fluid and back and forth again...stay open stay open...don't reduce things to absolutes, accept the blessings, feel the pain, allow the struggle and continue walking anyway". Two years ago while lost in the existential abyss - post the Aboriginal program, I received my spirit name and my solitary dark walk made sense. It was also the first time I admitted to myself how angry I was to be handed this walk. I am angry again. I can tell you I am not...but I am furious. I could be noble and humble and offer my empty gratitudes for these simple blessings but i am pissed at you God(ddess) for allowing me to walk humanely alone. I have been faithful to my call, I follow my instruction, I am worthy, I am deserving and yet still the sacrafice is continuously called. Speak to me about this...show me the purpose...stay with me...relieve me of the emptiness that threatens to obstruct my faithfulness. Today, your divinity is in question, although I am ashamed of that simple fact, today it is my truth and so there it is. Blessed Be...

It took me two years to fully leave Ontario behind. With all my stuff arriving right prior to the beginning of my Hearthkeeper year in apprenticeship, the parts of me strewn across the country were quietly collected and laid deeply into the BC earth. I have finally arrived. And no surprise that i have done so in the year of learning to attend to the hearth. Life is still a rollercoaster ride, full of surprises both ecstaticly enticing and the ones that hit hard, leaving you to wander aimlessly down an unlit road. But i can breathe here and hear myself. I can set the pace, make different decisions and carefully select my choices, which seem to really be a predominant theme of my life here. I am lonely and craving the deep connection of another, a like minded kindred whose face might be recognizeable as belonging to my kind. Some days i am tired of sleepign alone while others i wonder how i will manage to fit them into my life having be single for what seems like forever. Yet i remain relentless about the quality of connection and relationship that will exist in my life. A long journey of pot holes to pavign my way to solid ground. Although some days i remain trapped within a never ending battle with myself, about all the things screaming to be fixed, other days i am profoundly blown away by all the progress i have made, the long trips i have taken to the tunnels within myself and still come back more alive then when i started. I have this amazingly brilliant kid, whose tender and colorful personality and never-ending compassion, i feel blessed by everyday. She truly has taught me more than she will ever know. We live here in the mountainous and luciously green forested lands, close the the freshness of the ocean, nurtured by the raindrops and glittering in the sunlight. Our temperment has helped me experience more rainbows in a year than i have been priveleged to view in a lifetime. Community is forming, eclectic and diverse, colorful and creative. I went from building a marriage, to building a career to finally building a life. And it amazes me that all the obstacles i placed inf ront of myself were obliterated unther the magnitude of the call of my soul, my heart and in doing so quieted all the objections in my mind. Whenever i stop to truly think about it, the only thing i could possibly surmise is that truly and most authentically i am incredibly blessed.

Whispers of the Starfish

my heart opend today. A wee crack gasped for air and let out the pressure of years and years of build up. A dusty dry cough hanging in the air, the sputter of an engine that has sat idle for far too long, my heart opened up today. I think we like to romanticize the heart as an embodiment of all things flowery, ecstatic and caped in blankets of joy, when we forget the value in listening to it's stories of hardwon heartache still unlearned, it's sorrow of seasons past, its fear of becoming a flower once again rather then stay rooted as hard as a strong oak tree. My heart opened today. It began as a cool gentle breeze before quickly spiralling into a sea of terror, powerlessness and grief. My insignifcant place in the universe overwhelmed me and there in the middle of all of it sat my relationship with myself. I remembered that afternoon meeting in the school counselors office, fourth year of undergrad. My marriage was out of control, dark and wrought with violence. I was exhausted by contending these forces, carrying a full plus courseload and raising a baby. I was also in the middle of planning a wedding. The counselor asked if i thought there was a relationship with my thoughts on how things ought to be and the conflict with how they had been and my feelings of worth. My heart opened up then too and inside that identification, a well spring of sadness...she had seen it. My life had happened the way it had, because I simply wasn't deserving enough to experience the wondrousness of pretty white weddings and shared child-birthing. The TCM that was working with me in ontario contacted me two weeks ago to talk about the current state of my skin. "Your skin is angry Erica?...noo, you are angry!". I racked my brain tirelessly, checking in with the different sensations in my body, I really didnt feel anger. "nor could i identify anything that truly still sat as residual anger in my body. "I don't feeee-eeeel angry" I responded innocently..."yeah" he sighed :thats because your disassociated from your body". On my hands and knees scrubbing Madison's post operative puke from the floor, I remembered the child rearing deal Ken and I made when she was a baby - he would do puke, i would do poop. As i puckered up my nose at the tangy sour scent of vomit i've never been able to handle, i couldnt help but remind myself as comes it's reminders many days, i am not just the half of this operation, i am the whole of it. Most days, i manage to hide this anger from myself and plaster my walls with positive affirmations about how all of this independance has served me. Resilience they call it. You know.... what doesnt kill you makes you stronger. I don't deny the truth in these adages yet i will not attest that they make the walk any easier. But it remains interesting on how though the obstacles are great and the pain is fluid with the promise of gleaming treasure, i continue to attach my worth to it and make it about my unworthiness. My heart opened today. A whirlwind of beauty, joy and intensity among a streaking tornado backdrop. Although it's voice was rusty and it's tune was sad, my heart opened today and sang a song left unsung.