happy love day & podcasts*

love comes with, taken with my iPhone

I woke a few hours earlier than usual this morning. I'm sitting at my blue picnic table that we brought inside for the winter. It fits in a womb of three windows surrounding me. My coffee is steaming up to my chin. Chickens are clucking a few feet away from me on the other side of the windows.  The upstairs so quiet, spaces filled with the breath of my boys in deep sleep.  I'm listening to a Marion Woodman podcast.

Just now she said...

"Life on this earth is a womb in which we are developing these sensibilities and sensitivities for the world that we are moving into, through the birth canal of death and those sensibilities that we have developed here that really don't seem to have any particular value on this side, on the other side, we will suddenly realize what they are about.  Just like a baby coming out of the womb, it hasn't needed its eyes and ears and senses in the womb but the minute its born, we understand why this development has been going on for nine months."

This brought me comfort this morning.  It gifted me an ease about those parts of my life that I cannot really make sense of in this moment, yet I know there is meaning and purpose I will one day understand fully.  It offers me the courage to not have to know, now, perhaps ever in this life.

**************

I feel like I am behind the times on many things these days, one of them being Podcasts.  I have yet to indulge in them until recently.  I haven't avoided them consciously.  I just have gone throughout my day forgetting that they are out there to gift me wisdom as I move throughout my day.

A dear friend of mine has been sending me a few that have been moving her deeply. I loved the idea of her going about her day, with a voice of wisdom filling up her home as she wets her hands cleaning dishes or plays on the floor with her son.  I am not sure why it has taken me until this moment to realize how convenient this is for my current lifestyle but I accept that the timing is as it needed to be. Not only can I be filled up with the words filling my home but Cedar or my husband too, even if not consciously.  Reading doesn't come easy to me these days, but this, this I can do.

So I wanted to ask you what some of your favorite Podcasts are.  The ones that shifted everything.  The ones that changed your lives and hearts and if inspired, share a bit about what you learned.

Oh, and...Happy Love Day.  ; )

a crystal mothering a crystal*

Sometimes his constant connection to Spirit, to other worldly, to what is around him, to what is *in* him and his need for me to be there at every. single. moment. can be overwhelming. Exhausting. There are days when all I can do in my wee moments alone is stare, linger into nothingness or endlessness and find my breath or close my eyes and whisper that I am still here, me and these Other parts of me. I always describe him as intense on those days but really what he is, is Connected, even in his disconnectedness to people around him, he is connected to something larger and whole and of Spirit. And he just wants me there. With him. I anchor him. I help him feel safe. Heard. Understood. Seen. Calm. Believed in. What we all need, really if we admit it to ourselves.

A Crystal Child mothering a Crystal Child.

I am not used to needing to anchor anyone. I am accustom to people feeling freer around me. I am used to inspiring others to take flight. Ever moving, evolving, spreading of wings but never anchoring.

Perhaps this is the struggle I feel within, that I have felt a resistance to the past few years and not being conscious of it until now. That by me anchoring him, my son keeps me anchored. That together we are in that space to work, to own and claim and BE *in it* and not try it on and then move on to try something else, like my gypsy heart did all the rest of my years growing up. "I'm not choosing easy. I am not choosing to raise a 'good' child." I heard my friend say to me before laying her exhausted body down to sleep at the end of a very long day with her son. And it shot through me like lightning. This is it. I am not choosing easy. I am not wanting him to conform to any of my ideals. I am desiring him to be fully him, of his own mind and spirit and desires and needs. It is not me controlling him but me joining him and us teaching one another and guiding one another and working through Life on this earth together.

When I allow that surrender to come in, it breathes life into my hours spent with him on the floor, outside playing in puddles and with cars, boats, rocks, sticks, etc. Those moments where I feel agitated and bored and want to be doing something different with my time. I sit with him and share my heart with him and don't pretend to have it all together as his mother and remember that his purpose on this earth is to heal and transform and offer people wings too. I feel so utterly honored. I feel a heaviness lift and I let go just a bit more and an ease, a relief washes in. And because he is who he is, a born sage, he looks over at me and shows me he totally gets it.

The other day, Cedar said to his babysitter when they were outside "This tree feels sadness, it needs a hug". He feels so much. I feel so much. When I see this as Connectedness rather than Intensity, it shifts things for me a bit for some reason.

Truly, I am just now beginning to find words for all of this. I haven't had words. I know I am going to stumble through trying to find words. I've been quiet with everyone, about motherhood. Sharing bits with souls I feel safe with but really even being quiet with myself about it. Because I wanted it for so long. Not because I always imagined myself a mother. Quite the contrary. I didn't really have a strong desire to be a mother until I had a dream at age 30 about an angel child walking with me on the beach and having a very deep conversation with this child. When I woke, there was a knowing that I would be a mother to this child one day. My yearning to be a mother was born from that dream and was affirmed when I met my husband a year later. Then began our very long, emotional fertility journey to our child because that yearning was deeply rooted in me and that child spirit called to me every day.

Because of our long journey, I have carried a bit of guilt that being a mama has felt overwhelming to me. I see women having two, three, four, five and more children.  I see them homeschooling, with their children every moment, not having a second alone and seeming to just flow and ease into it all.  And I wonder why having just one child has felt like so much.

I feel a peace when I stop comparing. I feel a peace when I remember that the child in the dream who visited me long ago, whispered in my ear that he needed to be with me. I feel a peace when I trust this and allow it to be enough.

A Crystal Child mothering a Crystal Child.

Its extraordinarily awesome and beautiful, hard and achy, stretching, widening, opening and rad. I wouldn't change anything about it except that I need to open up about it a bit more so that I don't feel alone and all the mamas out there don't feel alone. Its easier to share the easy parts in this safe screen between us. This is way more vulnerable and risky. I am choosing to trust releasing it into this space.  I choose to trust the pull to do so.

We all have our own stories and journeys through mothering/parenting.  This is my story.  Separate but also part of a whole we all experience and feel and see in each others stories.

Bare with me as I find my words...

grain free pumpkin pancakes*

A lot of time and energy goes into what we put into our bodies in this house. Each of us have sensitivities that are crucial to our health and well being. I was born with Celiac, unable to digest gluten and my tummy is intolerant to most fish except shell fish. Boho Boy has an intolerance to gluten, dairy, soy, peanuts, almonds, sunflower seeds, safflower oil and citric acid (those last two ingredients are in everything!). Cedar seems to feel more calm and clear on a grain free/gluten free, corn free, peanut free, high protein, low carb diet.

Because of our various needs, not one "diet" out there works for our family, which is okay with us because we are used to not fitting into a box. We love to eat and we love eating for pleasure too. So you can imagine the creativity that needs to go into our meals. Oh my!

With much trial and error, we have learned we all feel better juicing our own fruit and veggie juices, eating more raw, mostly vegetarian, meat/fish just a few times a week and light on brown rice breads/pastas. It has taken us years to fully grasp what works for each of our very individual bodies and create a food lifestyle that is in harmony for all of us. Because we all know that making three different meals is just not super fun, no matter how much you love cooking! I just now feel like I have a grasp on this and am more aware of what to look for as far as recipes and substitutes.

Today I found this recipe over at The Detoxinista, a blog I discovered while doing a search for grain free goodies. She's brilliant and has some really lovely recipes on her site. I wanted to share this one with you because they truly do taste like pancakes and I am looking forward to trying different flavors with them.

My pumpkin-lovin' boys were in heaven and wanted seconds and thirds. I had to substitute almond butter for Boho Boy's homemade cashew butter because of his allergy to almonds but they turned out perfect.

Boho Boy's Cashew Butter

Ingredients:

• 1 cup cashews
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoon oil (we use grapeseed or walnut)
• Dash of vanilla extract

Instructions:

• Blend it like mad. Add some water/oil or maple syrup to achieve desired creaminess...and to help the blender along as it stops.

Pumpkin Pancakes

Ingredients:

• ½ cup almond or cashew butter
• ½ cup pumpkin puree
• 2 whole eggs
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon honey

Instructions:

• Preheat your oven to 350F, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
• In a medium bowl, combine all of the ingredients and mix until a smooth batter forms.
• Use a ¼ cup to scoop the batter on the parchment-lined baking sheet
• Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the pancakes are fluffy and golden.
• Serve warm, with pure maple syrup or whatever you desire

Yum Yummity Yum Yum.

silences*

I'm sitting here at the coffee shop listening to the most beautiful, soulful, haunting and heart-ache-full classical music. I wish I knew the composer. I'll ask when it quiets down. The music led me to these images and so I share them with you here. I have no words. They were emptied when the music started. I am accepting that its okay I have no words. Lately I've been drawn to the feeling in between, before and after words come. The deep breaths and pauses and gazes and long sighs. These silences are where my heart pulses with soul. And they feel enough.

I wonder what story these images tell you...

a fun question*

the coffee she made for me.  she always designs just what i need on the foam.

I was at a local coffee shop that I frequent often. I stood at the register, my eyes moving up and down the menu, feeling a little overwhelmed by the choices and not at all sure what I wanted.

"Do you need help?" the beautiful blue doe-eyed Barista asked.  She's there every time I come in.

"Yes! Yes, I would actually love some help." I responded, blushing. "Today, you look like a lavender white mocha". She said.

I smiled because that drink does feel a bit like something I would choose had I seen it on the menu and I wondered how she knew that about me.

We exchanged a few bright eyed glances and smiles and then she asked while foaming the milk...

"If you could be any role in a movie, what would it be?"

I giggled, surprised by the question and then found my mind drifting to The Princess Bride. That film holds such good memories for me at a time when my life felt so simple and innocent and less complicated.

"Princess Buttercup". I answered.

Her whole face lit up.  "Good one."

Me, the hopeless romantic and lover of long curly hair and beautiful renaissance dresses and believing in someone's word...and in "true love". ; )  I am sure if I had enough time and mindfulness in that moment (without anyone waiting behind me in line), I could have come up with something deeper and perhaps indie but I love my knee-jerk answer, for that moment and how it made me feel.

So now I'd like to turn it over to those that are reading this. If you could play a role/character in a movie, who would it be and why?

{Boho Boy answered "Han Solo"...which is so him!}

sponsor GIVEaway*

designs by Moorea Seal

Moorea and I are so excited to offer this giveaway. She is inspired by the energy here in this space and her designs are guided by the bohemian woman. I'm so drawn to the elegance of her boho style.

There are 3 different ways for you to enter this giveaway for a $50 gift certificate! Feel free to enter all 3 different ways, leaving 3 different comments to let us know all the ways you have entered. Up your chances! Please note, there will be ONE WINNER. One person will win the gift certificate. Thanks lovelies!

ENTRY #1: Visit Moorea's shop and leave a comment here letting us know which item in her shop is your favorite! ENTRY #2: Tweet about this giveaway and leave a second comment here letting us know. ENTRY #3: Post about this giveaway on Facebook and leave a third comment here letting us know. Update: WINNER is Katie Cartwright!  Moorea will contact you very soon

circling asia canaday*

Mani, taken by Jeanette LeBlanc

My dear friend Mani needs circling, support, help. She shares her story here.

two passages that help me feel clearer*

clearer, self portrait

The past few weeks I've felt clearer than usual. I think its a combination of things: An awareness that this year, new age marks a greater consciousness for us humans. I have felt it in the streets and in stores when out and about. A bit more kindness and softness. More smiles and warmth exchanged. A deeper gratefulness to be here. People seem less afraid to engage in conversation. In fact just a second ago, a lovely woman sitting near me at the coffee shop leaned over and asked me a few questions. She didn't really feel like a stranger. A barista brought me my drink and he said giggling "Here's your foggie!" in reference to the London Fog steaming in my mug. We both laughed. It was such a kindred thing to say! Something I would call my drink. This is what I mean about not being strange-ers. I just feel this Universal shift of oneness. Perhaps just on a small scale right now but I have hope that these vibrations will expand out to all humanity.

Speaking of this gig of Being Human, today I read this...

poem by Rumi

Oh how this brought a newish clarity to me, even though this awareness and wisdom has lived in my heart over the years as I've navigated some ache from relationships. Recently, I felt it fully sink in on a deeper level. I needed this shift in perspective of feeling wounded to feeling grateful for that ache, pain, separation, rejection, whatever it may be between me and another human that didn't go as I had longed or hoped. "Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond."

Our pain and sorrow, our hurt...it offers us compassion for those around us that may be going through something similar. It give us an opportunity to love deeper and wider...ourselves and others. It brings us to our knees so that we can reMember our strength to stand and be brave in allowing others to help lift us. So much, so much! Our pain and sorrow are gifts. Sometimes I grasp this concept immediately and the healing moves faster through my body, my heart. Sometimes, depending on the layers, it can take days, months years for me to recognize fully why I am grateful something happened the way it did.

But now I have Rumi to remind me.

And in that pain, when in the thick mucky gook of it, when we find ourselves in a spiral, there is goodness in that too.

The other day, I reached out to a friend spilling some anxieties and fears, knowing my thoughts were completely unraveling and out of my control in the moment, I said "These feelings are so unfamiliar. Am I spiraling?"

And she sent me this passage...

passage from Jack Kornfield in his book After the Esctasy, the Laundry

I felt myself lay back, arms wide open...fully embracing the spiral because spiraling is human and we all do it and how healing, how validating is it to just surrender? Surrender to the dance with an awareness that we will eventually come back to our center? And in that returning to center, we will be fuller and wiser? Sigh. Good good stuff. "In the course of this great spiral, we return to where we started again and again, but each time with a fuller, more open heart."

Mmmmm...I wanted to share these nuggets with you as they were shared with me. They offered me compassion and patience, surrender and relief for mySelf, for others and especially for those "guides" that come into my life. ; )

The Secret Life of Darkness*

art above is a beautiful gift from rain, created by messycanvas

Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own.

There you can be sure you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb tonight.

The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.

You must learn one thing: the world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn

anything or anyone that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

~ David Whyte ~ (House of Belonging)

I am so grateful to this beautiful soul in my life. For offering this quote by David Whyte at a time when I needed to meet these words and this truth.

Ahhh. The idea that the cocoon, the darkness I have surrendered to the past few years has been a WOMB shifted everything for me.

Moving to the Pacific Northwest meant a new beginning for me in many layered ways. I chose this as a time to strip myself slowly of that which didn't bring me life and the figuring out of why it didn't and what truly does bring life was a unexpectedly painful process. My pulling back and peeling layers was nothing personal to anyone or anything. It was all me and my own soul work, all inward and inner. My intentions were to live more in the present, in the flesh and learn to not rely so deeply on online connections for attention, validation, and ego strokes. To relearn how to feel LOVED and worthy and purposeful in my silence. It was full of ache and loneliness. It almost felt like a detox of sorts. Yet it was also very FREEing to create and honor such a simplicity around me. I know this type of lone-quest is not for everyone, nor needed by everyone. It was just what it took for an empath like me to hush the noise and be naked and pure about my choices. To live intentionally, inspired by my own intentions and not influenced by others feelings about me or outside of me. I was quiet and nourished in this womb and the rebirthing process is beginning. I am surfacing with a deeper awareness of boundaries needed to protect my heart and what surrounds me and my family and acceptance of my sensitivities and needs and those of my family. Acceptance of self. Oh, that's a big one for me.

These words specifically from David Whyte spoke to it all for me; "Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn..."

Sigh. Yes, oh yes. My aloneness. My quest of unbelonging, which is leading me to my belonging.

I am forever grateful to those that stood near me in my silence, who saw the vastness of my heart and met me in my own quiet, along with their own quiet, each in our own wombs, aware of the other but with no expectations. This woman below is one of them.

My soul-friend Rain, wrote these words for me, for all of you, may you soak them in and let them marinate as a New Year begins:

***********

all images by rain

Winter's dark casts long shadows over a reluctant dawn. I am soaked in laconic light. I write these words within days of December's solstice, always grateful for year's end, this quiet space for reflection and closure. The past twelve months have been my own kind of (soul)stice, the gift of one long, dark night designed to heal me from what I always feared most.

That's what darkness has become for me. Healing.

We are conditioned to consider darkness as something to run from. To avoid. We think of it as the opposite of light, in terms of good versus evil, or horror versus bliss. I grew up with a crippling kind of Dark in the form of deep, abiding fear. At a very young age it became the bread I tasted, the water flooding my cells, the breath I inhaled and held. Fear of God and man. Fear of myself. My future. Fear of the wayward longings of my heart and even my heart itself. It was the kind of fear, I wrote once, that picks apart everything sacred and beautiful until nothing holy remains.

Our life history shapes what darkness means. Our stories shape what haunts us. But darkness doesn't have to be scary, and when reach the end of all we know, perhaps the end of ourselves, we discover the most surprising thing of all: that this darkness? The vast unknown? Everything we're frightened of, the thing we construct our lives around to avoid?

All. Gift.

Let the sun fall in your cupped hand. Today be only this: the thing that holds the light. ~ Shawnacy Kiker

My humble, gentle, you-can-do-this secret

The truth is, all life begins in the dark.

What is a cocoon, but a dark place of protection, safety, and transformation?

What is solstice, but a place of reflection and rest?

What is the earth, but a dark place for germination of seed?

All darkness is a womb if we allow it to be. And what is a womb, but a hollow space for light?

What healed me from fear also healed my heart from an intensely negative concept of darkness. It became a brilliant invitation to my own awakening, and I? Witness to my own birth. You can do this too, love. I will tell you how:

• Take a deep breath.
• Exhale.
• Gather moonlight and spirit. We all need a little magic.
• Nourish your heart with the bread of comm(unity).
• Pack the hollow spaces in your bones with deep, divine Love.
• Drench your cells with the water of life.
• Your guides are Truth and Spirit but the journey is yours alone. Kiss your feet, place your soles on the earth. Let your toes become alive.
• Go there.
• Yes, there.
• Go. There.

Whatever it is you fear most, whatever your darkness means to you, whatever haunts you and desperately needs healing, move directly into it.

You can do this. You are stronger than you know. Life is on the other side.

Everything you want

is on the other side of fear.

George Addair

I chose unafraid as my word for 2012 and it was only when I embraced for the first time my reality of fear did I begin the arduous yet hopeful task of healing it. Because, truthfully? Fear means this matters. Fear says, this is meaningful to your deepest self. Fear is a wise old woman who knows us better than we know ourselves and who can help guide us home. She tells us, wherever I am, dig deep here. Right here. This is where you need to be. Pay attention. Fear is like an internal systems analyst adjusting her heavy black framed glasses and speaking soft through bold red lips: darling, this is really really really important and you are dizzy and sick because the whole universe of you hangs by a tender silver thread and anyone could come by and whisk it away like they were brushing a spider web off their face. It is that vulnerable.

And when fear's panicked fury subsides and we take deep, shaky breaths, when we bravely melt into the shuddering silence after a storm, this is when we discover something new and wholly unexpected: we find, all along the dark and pummeled seashore of our tender earth-selves, the most radiant, moon-holy of pearls. Rain-soaked and gleaming.

But before we can find them, we must listen.

Darkness is the most sacred portal to life. To become vibrantly alive, leaping from a flat page of black and white into a world of vivid color ~ colors we can taste, breathe, savor ~ we must listen to the secrets of darkness. Remember this, the next time you look around and see no light.

For what is faith, but a journey through the dark?

And I promise you, love, that the day will come. You will, in the words of Rilke, break into being. In the words of a dear friend and favorite poet, that day will come, when

the fear-voice grows small like an echo or a photograph from atop a distant hill 50 years ago,

and when the joy, and the life voice grow strong and near and full of strange woven music - turbulent and prophetic.

from Anthem, by Shawnacy Kiker

Fear, like darkness, has a quiet voice, a grown up kind. And our darkness has something to say, all whispery with promises and barely there:

Honey, can you hold on?

Because if you sit with me a while, I will teach you something sacred.