Motherhood

This Mother’s Day morning I woke from a beautiful dream. A dream that I’d had a baby boy. It was a little disconcerting, since I didn’t know I was pregnant. But the baby was there (strangely in my underwear, like a hammock). I was surprised and delighted. He was beautiful and I suckled him, then realized that I still had a cord and the placenta to deal with. I finally got the placenta out–I won’t share that part–and into the fridge for later.

I tried to go to work after (they were not expecting me to have a baby and I hadn’t  arranged for time off), but the wonderful PF vetoed my thoughts on that. Good man, as always. The baby was so quiet I had to keep checking to make sure he was ok. We didn’t have a name for him yet, but I kept thinking of him as “Chris”. (I would not choose this as a name in my conscious mind).

I’m not surprised, as my recent days have been filled with such thoughts. Yes, pregnancy for myself, but also as a new career path. Maybe as a doula, maybe as a midwife, definitely as a lactation consultant. Definitely offering home-birth services, likely having a birth center with my growing closer everyday friend, Ashlee. Definitely empowering women to make their own choices for their birth experience, supporting them to trust their bodies wisdom, their own intuition, and help them overcome the fear that is imposed on them by the current state of alarmist health care in our country.

The next phase of my life will be revisiting my earliest passions as an adult: herbalism and motherhood. I want to be helping others achieve their dreams of it, and supporting families in their choices regarding it. It all starts with Aviva Romm’s course, “Herbal Medicine for Women”.

In the words of Arwyn, “Your path is already laid before you.”

The “Insert Color Here” Tent: Tales of Women’s Gatherings

 

I’ve been busy. Somehow, I’m busier than ever, and I’m doing less for myself. I’ve missed writing. I’ve missed distilling down my thoughts, and filling in my own blanks as I take the time to contemplate.

Over the past 5 years, I’ve been following a path that I knew that I must. I moved away from my dance practice and friends, I got a corporate job (then two more after that), I divorced my partner of nearly 10 years, started a new relationship, combined families with my boyfriend, and began working for a vocational school of alternative health care, then also for an herb shop that focuses of course on alternative healing. By doing so, I’ve met and come into contact with some amazing people. In doing so, my exposure has rekindled my early love afair with herbs, natural healing, and most recently natural childbirth, and the desire to be a part of that world. The last two years in particular, I feel that I am being sucked down the rabbit hole into a different world (I took the red pill). I’m on my way–in and unexpected but not really surprising way–to embracing of my destiny.

At the beginning of this year, I finally paid attention to the feeling that I was going nowhere in my life and career (although I’m very successful and well regarded in the businesses that I’m currently working in). During that time I became very ill, and was not able to work for about a week. I had an epiphany that one of the things that I was being called to do, was to work in service to humanity in some way. Working for money and for my own gain is completely unsatisfying. Not that I don’t want to create abundance in my life, because I do. I still have personal aspirations of owning a home with land so that I can raise food and animals. But my work going forward in my life requires me to live in service, and I have dedicated myself to this. I’ll be starting this journey by studying women’s health with Aviva Romm, MD and midwife through her correspondence course this month.

As part of this journey, I’m also recognizing the need for the sacred in my life. The time and attention to focus on something holy and larger than myself. Luckily, I’m not the only one. There is a particular group of women whom I’ve met on my path to finding what is right for me, who are recognizing the same thing. Over the past several months, we’ve been gathering on or near the full moon. Our gatherings began with a specific purpose of setting personal intention in mind, but have beautifully grown to be so much more fulfilling. These gatherings are joyous and full of laughter, are a safe place to release our deepest fury and saddness, and a place to join us together in a bond that I don’t understand. These gatherings push me emotionally to be more open and vulnerable, they also require of me to be understanding, supportive, and non-judgmental. These are all things that I struggle with in my daily life.

I’ve been telling myself all this time that I’m strong, capable, intelligent, self-sufficient, and tough-enough to deal with anything on my own. I don’t need help from anyone–not from my partner, not from my family, and not from my friends (do I really even have any friends–people who will stop their own lives to help you with yours?). This is the great lie of Western Civilization, and is the reason that our planet is in such dire shape. We DO need each other. We’ve all heard the saying, “It takes a village.” I believe this to be true down the core of my soul. We NEED community and dependency to be the most whole that we can be. We need each other to share our experiences, to celebrate our triumphs, to hold our hands when we feel scared, to support us when we make mistakes, to keep us accountable for the promises we make to ourselves and others. Our society is crumbling under the weight of our singular responsibility and isolation. We are deceived to think that if we could have everything our own way we would finally be happy. We would not.

In the past year, I’ve had the eye opening experience of knowing an incredible woman who has the magic to manifest whatever is required for her business and herself. She’d not perfect, not high and mighty, not better than anyone else, but she lives in the most complete integrity that I have ever seen someone hold themselves to. She has taught me that group mind is waaaaay better than one mind, that I don’t need to be threatened when someone can do a better job than I can at something–this is the universe manifesting just what you/the project/etc. needs to go forward. I’ve learned that you don’t throw people away when they are not living up to the level of your expectations of integrity. You love them through it, not by rejecting them, but by bringing attention to the discrepancy with love and honest communication. I’ve learned that expressing gratitude for even the smallest thing, brings more amazing things into my life.

This knowledge has fostered my understanding of the necessity of the monthly gathering in my life. I need this place to be free, to have no commitments other than to each other for this time, to have no distractions, no demands, other than to be present. To share my deepest fears, to hear other’s deep needs and support them, to experience joy, to express gratitude for all that I have and am. I am supported to follow my path, no matter how crazy it might sound to others, these ladies always see the correlations to my life that I do not.

Initially, we tried to plan our gatherings to have a certain activity or theme, but we’ve found that we all intuitively bring what we need, and have created wonderful and meaningful ritual each time we gather, being guided by our higher selves. It seems to be much more meaningful each time, probably because we haven’t built up the expectations of what it was “supposed” to be.

My wish is that other women will follow what might be a strange impulse to go and be somewhere that might not fit into their current picture of themselves. That they might find another soul whom they can share with a special ritual, maybe just lighting a candle and bowing heads, or singing song, or creating something (a quilt, an herb mandala on the beach…). And might this light between them attract others, and that the group of them might put aside their fears of being intimate, and support and share with each other, without judgment, without jealousy, and be open to receiving as well as giving. My wish is for the world to be lit once again by the glowing light of women who are not warring with their bodies or each other, or shunning their feminine nature, but who are embracing themselves and each other to be healed in this light, thereby healing our families, our communities and our worlds. My wish is for you to find this. Don’t be afraid. Just listen to your heart. This is waiting for you right now.

The Destruction of Helms Deep

Cocoon

I’m outside on a blanket in the beautiful pre-spring weather we are having. It must be 70 degrees. On my way to the beautiful spot I found, most of the chickens followed me in a raucous parade. They hung around quite a while digging for bugs and having dirt baths, clucking softly and sweetly. About as soon as I began to type, they left me. Maybe it is the wind that is starting to kick up. Maybe it is because I’ve turned my attention away from nature and into this device. I usually feel repelled when someone begins to dive into their computer—usually thinking to myself: I’m right here, talk to ME, see ME.

I originally came out to finish crocheting a flower to go on the headwrap that I’d intended for Falyn about a month too late for it to be useful. Of course, I also needed my computer, or rather Youtube, to show me the crochet stitches I do not yet know. And as one might guess, I’m just out of the range of the wi-fi on the grassy hill I chose as my spot. Le sigh.

It got me thinking about what I CAN do without web access and no book of crochet stitches. I can write I thought, just in a basic word program. Like the old days. Write, and not have to immediately post it to Facebook or WordPress or whatever. I keep telling myself I should write at least once per week, and I keep not doing it. I obviously need to get out of the house to not be distracted by its trappings. I’ve also been sick, busy, and fearful of writing my true thoughts and feelings.

Over the last month, since my “flu that would not end” began actually, I’ve been going through some kind of change, a metamorphosis of sorts. I’ve been feeling the change coming for a couple of years. But nothing actually happened. I realize now that I could liken the last couple of years as the building the cocoon phase. But now, introspection triggered by my illness and forced solitude I can feel my insides melting down. I can feel my own personal Helms Deep starting to crumble. And as the stones begin to tumble down, I find myself trying to catch them, and put them back, or even just to let them fall softly. I’ve spent many years carrying everything, that I’m finally exhausted. I can’t do everything and be everything for everyone. I have to decide who I am going to be for me, and begin to make the conscious choices that will let me lead a life of purpose and service.

What will that take? One of two things: I will be alone, and have no one to answer to but my spirit’s calling, or I will be in a relationship where I trust my partner. That first one is not appealing, but the second option is so so so difficult.

I’ve been a single mom, I’ve been in relationships where I was betrayed—too often—and in relationships where I carried everything. It’s no wonder I can’t trust. And then of course I focus on why I can’t trust, and guess what? What I focus on comes true. I need a new way of thinking and being. I need to be able to let go. I need to focus on ways that I can trust my beloved PF, and I need to communicate my hurts and needs in a new way. I keep telling the universe that I’m ready. Then I dig my heels in. I think I’ll take off these boots and let my toes sink into the soil. Root myself in the earth, and not in old ways of being and belief. I’ve always avoided putting roots down, so that I could be free to leave, move on when things didn’t work., I’ve been a gypsy, and I’ve loved many parts of my life. Now I want another kind of life. One that is connected and supported. One that doesn’t require everything from me. I’m scared, but I’m ready.

Family Matters

Family Matters – Red Heads

I had a really lovely time this weekend with my mother. We went to Redding Friday to support my Grandmother’s angiogram, did some decorating, and furniture arranging on Saturday, and took my mom out for her birthday on Saturday night. Saturday night was doubly lovely, since it’s the first time the PF and I have had a chance to really just hang out with my parents. Often there is such a flurry of activity when the whole family is together that it doesn’t seem like we get to visit at all.

Our dinner culminated in a bit of an argument between my mother and I. This often happens during emotional times and ESPECIALLY if there is alcohol involved, which there usually is. The argument was about our perspectives, or actually, about how judgmental I am about people and their choices. Which is very true.

The overriding theme of the conversation was that at different stages of our lives, we know certain things to be true, and the younger generation judges the older, and then when they get there, they understand and in this case agree or buy into whatever the perspective is.

As a teenager, I was filled with so much surety that things didn’t have to be the way they were. That people could make different choices and that the world could be changed by this. And I still know this to be true. But what I know now, and realized more deeply during our conversation, is that people don’t WANT to make different choices. Our grandparents don’t want to change their perspective, even if it allows them peace and joy in their lives. Our parents don’t either. I understand that, because I often don’t want to let go of my need to be right, or I want to hold on to my anger or hurt. But sometimes I do let these things go, and I know I’m better for it. It reminds me of Carolyn Myss, and her book, “Why People Don’t Heal”. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sZKwLoLiaI)

“It’s not that forgiveness scares us so much, it’s that we’re terrified of how rapidly our lives will change when we forgive.”

I can see that my mom and my grandmother, and definitely her mother before her are caught in this loop. I pray for my daughter and for her daughter, and all the daughters after them, that I can beat my fear, and forgive and heal and stay open to the speed of change that will come to me.

I’ve had several evolutions in my life so far, but they are further and further apart. Maybe its time to take the brake off and see how fast the universe can go. Who can I forgive today? Today, I’d like to forgive myself for being judgmental and afraid. Come along for the ride, see what amazing things we can find by letting go of old junk, and getting some of our spirit back. No safety gear required. The universe always provides a net.

Frazzled

Its been a heck of a few days, or weeks….months, really. I keep thinking that I will have time to write poignant posts, and talk about the personal growth I’d presumably be experiencing during such a time of leisure. Mostly, I’m running from one task to the next and being the kind of mom that I’m not sure I ever wanted to be: Leave the house at quarter to seven to get the kid to high school, go to work with the younger one, walk her to her school, go back to work, work like a maniac for 10 hours, pick up the younger one from daycare, pick up the teen from tennis practice, rush home listening to the dramas of the day, get home and check on baby chicks, try to make a dinner that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to talk about at work, watch TV for a bit or possibly try to figure out how to get X kid what they need in the way of homework help, money, items for their project (all due TOMORROW), then go to bed and try to talk to my guy who falls asleep because he’s also exhausted. Forget having regular sex, or relaxing evenings pursuing a loved past time, or taking a bath. 

I do get to skip the last bit before ‘rush home’ on Tuesdays, since I get to teach belly dance that night. And the last Wednesday of the month I get to meet with a group of brilliant ladies where we all get to (re)learn what being feminine is really about.

With every day so full and exhausting, I’m finding it near impossible to make space for some things. Things like an intimate relationship with the PF, or trying to get pregnant, or having a beautiful place to live, or making something creative. I was speaking with my beautiful Fae friend, and she is even more mired in this cycle than I. Today I advised her to think about letting go of somethings. Now I’m thinking I need to do more of that as well. I’ve done some letting go, but I’m feeling like something more drastic should be done. When I was younger, it was so much easier to do that, even as a single mom. But now, tied up in the world the way I am, I feel more and more trapped. I could quit my job, but I have a responsibility to the PF for my half of the rent and utilities-not to mention food, gas, etc., the teen seems to have a constant list of “NEEDS” that must be attended to, and things like ridiculously expensive car repairs, doctor and dentist bills, keep me in this place. With the constant financial demands, it seems so difficult to see another way. 

Then I argue with myself about where I want to be, and all of the obstacles in the way. Maybe the universe wants me here right now. That’s my fallback position, when movement or change gets too difficult. It feels like a cop out in so many ways, but so many things are out of my control that I’m having a terrible time finding what I CAN do, rather than just seeing what I can’t.

It’s enough to make you crazy.

I don’t have a clean wrap up for this one. I guess it’s more of a vent…..

Well, that’s all folks….I hope to be writing soon about the Peasant Project.

Poem: Here’s A Rope: Tie It Around Me | Bedlam Farm Journal

I’ve been in love with Bedlam Farm Journal ever since the PF introduced me to it about a year and a half ago. There is always a brave and uplifting message that lets me know I’m not crazy for viewing the world the way I do. I don’t always get the time to read it everyday, but I sure try to read it when ever I have a spare moment. Tonight there was a lovely poem that touched a deep place in me. I hope you like it too…

Here’s a rope. Tie it around me. If you are drowning. If life is chasing you down the path. If the clouds are gathering over your precious head.

If life seems so frightening.

If the small people are getting you down.

If you have lost faith and they have told you

that the world is an awful place,

and you have no business shining your light in it.

If no one is listening to you.

If you need to be heard.

And you are gasping for air, fighting to live your life.

Here’s a rope. Tie it around me.

And I will pull you up.

Out of the water.

Off of the path. To safety.
Out of reach of the small  people slinging their poisoned arrows into your soul,

to a place,

where they will never find you again.

If you need me, here’s a rope. Tie it around me.

by Jon Katz
Keep shining your light Jon. It’s like a lighthouse for me sometimes.

Original Post: Poem: Here’s A Rope: Tie It Around Me | Bedlam Farm Journal.

Hatching our First Eggs!

Blue Ameraucana | Gabbard Farms Hatching Eggs and Poultry Supplies.

Well, since moving to the wild lands at the end of McCourtney Road, we have lost 3 chickens to predators. Unfortunately we lost two of them the same day. Once we realized that we were going to need more layers, it had already been more than a weeks time before we noticed that two of the remaining chickens were “broody”. (Broody: inclined to sit on eggs, which are called a clutch if you want to know). We don’t have a rooster, so we can’t hatch our own eggs (yes, you need a boy to make fertile eggs), and I knew it was too late to order some eggs for deliver (I can’t afford to pay for overnighting them). So I hoped against hope that one of the remaining chickens would go broody. And lo, Shiny became thusly broody a week later.

So frantically, I got online, ordered some Lavender Orphingtons, a Barneveldor, and a few Americauna’s to lay green/blue eggs. I expected them to arrive by Wednesday, and they did not arrive. Thursday came and went–no eggs. I then tracked the package and found that it was scheduled to arrive on Saturday. OH NO!! I was having them sent to my work and super sad face that the office is closed on Saturday.

Joyously, the fantastic Nevada City post office dropped them at the front door today (Friday) and the lovely Ashlee brought them to my office when she saw the package! YAAAAAAAAY!!!!!! We got our eggs. After a convoluted trail home, we finally arrived and ran to the house, marked our eggs with Sharpies to know which were hatching and which our chickens laid, then we went to the business of swapping out the non-fertiles with the fertiles. Shiny jumped off the nest after some foraging around her undersides, and ran from the chicken house. I tried not to worry, since she ran to the water dish and drank for a long time. Its ok, I thought, she’ll get back on the nest. And after a bit of scratching around in the grass, she went right back to the hen house. However, when I checked on her, she was NOT on the new eggs. She had chosen a different nest box to settle into. DANG IT! After opening the box again, she ran out seemingly quite upset by the intrusion, and for good reason.

No I really began to worry about the possibility that she would abandon the nest. Thinking that she might not go back to the box with the eggs, I spread the eggs out amongst the three nesting boxes, putting 3 in the box she had just been in, and two in each of the other boxes. I could tell she was still wanting to set on her nest, so I walked away and watched from a distance. Sure enough she returned to the middle box with the three eggs, and was fussing around quite a bit. I let her be and about an hour later when closing the up the hen house after the other chickens had put themselves to bed I found her still setting. Yay! I very gently gathered the other eggs and stuffed them under her. She remained setting. SUCCESS.

We’ll see how things go, but here’s hoping for a sweet brood of chicks in 3 weeks!