The story I remembered to tell.

It’s beautiful today. Feels like a dream. Typical southern California winter weather - in the 60's with a slight breeze, cerulean skies. The morning was busy with chores, an appointment that took much longer than it should, trips to the grocery store.

But now t’s 3pm, a good time to sit outside and write. A good time to breathe in the color of emerald rye grass. To delight in the vibrant red and yellow petals of flowers I planted but whose names I’ve forgotten.  To be distracted by bird song. To give thanks for the trees whose leaves find their merry rhythm in the breeze. A good time to close my eyes and have a love affair with the sun. 

Today is a good day to savor chicken vegetable soup with crusty bread. To relish the taste of chocolate with chunks of almonds and a hint of spiciness. To use the special white-glazed Vitre cup for my espresso. To imagine there’s no such thing as time. That the sun moves across the sky because it’s dancing to the music of a celestial orchestra only those who still their minds can hear. 

Today is a good day to visit Mama and Papo. To witness their slow movements. To hear their complaints. Then to laugh off the serious side of life. To remember younger days and how fast they flew by. To let them know it’s ok to grow old and realize I have no way of knowing how it feels for them. To put off the search for a senior retirement home. 

Today is a good day to dream up dinner after a walk. To rub the cat’s luxurious fur. To sneeze. To write a note. To sing with abandon. To put away the rest of the holiday lights. To organize the things to do tomorrow. To make love. To say goodnight to love. To sleep. And dream again.

It’s a day like many  others, except, most days go by in faithful service, worn like a favorite scarf, and then tossed aside, forgotten for the night. Today I remember to tell it's story.

Leo Full Moon

The Full Moon in Leo overpowered me!

I had planned on doing a specific ceremony to transform some old energy and clear the way fully for the new, and then I decided not to because of how I was feeling... very restless and unsettled.

So, I just allowed the energy of Leo/Sekhmet to infuse me…I surrendered to it.

I journeyed with Sekhmet and felt Her branding the Ankh across my heart chakra. And she gave me her Scepter to hold. I felt fine at the time and I even spontaneously danced the energy in celebration. 

But later I felt sort of mauled - worked over - by the Lion energy...It felt hot and intense. Burning. 

So unlike the cool, soothing, Lunar energy I am accustomed to. 

It is difficult to integrate. I feel a sort of fury…a hunger…the hot breath of Sekhmet...a throat full of power...

Now that I have written this I am aware of how I don’t make as much room for Leo to express in my life. It’s uncomfortable for me to feel that kind of primal power…it’s uncomfortable for me to stand up in public for what I feel is right…I don’t take responsibility for my own leadership qualities…I am afraid to stand out and be at odds with others…I want to fit in so I feel safe.

But seeking safety at the expense of being who I am is to become prey...

This blog is my roar.

Regal Essence

Long mane,

Power-full roar, 

Surrendering - 

The purr softens the fear,

Of transformation -

Into pure being.

Poem for Megan DiPiazza*

It's one of those days -
I can't decide
What's best.

A day like any other
With the exception
That at the edge of this cliff
There's a decision I must make.

It's hard.
It's difficult.
It's overwhelming.

Is this a dream
Or a nightmare?
Or somewhere
In between tree branches?

Pinch me,
Tickle me,
Wake me up.

Just let me be ok,
Let me take my time,
Listen with reverence,
Tomorrow I will not be with you.

Forgive the mistakes,
Forgive the imperfections,
Forgive the bumpy road I choose.



Megan DiPiazza was reported missing in 2012. She had left a good-by note to her family. This week,  her remains were found inside her car wedged between trees down a ravine in the Angeles National Forest. She was 33.

I did not know her.

But sometimes a stranger's death fills me with sadness and a deep desire to say something.

Priestess of the Void

I meditate on synchronicity. And if the synchronicity involves a word, all the better. This weekend was not exception. The word was Void.

I was researching the obsolete constellation of Cerberus. Why, you might ask? Simply because the three headed dog was my previous synchronicity. The search was somewhat futile as very little is written about this constellation. No significant stars, no known reason for it's origin nor it's demise. Yet the word Void appeared like a star in it's own right in the deep sky of my mind. This was the first of the synchronicities.

I recalled my first experience with "The Void". I was a young mother on my second round of meditation studies, my first having been as a teen in the 60's. I was sitting cross-legged on a blanket on the old hardwood floor of my living room, the babies down for a nap. I had been practicing meditation for a few months. Just emptying my mind and going deep within. On this late spring morning I closed my eyes and looked at the dark inside of my lids. My consciousness dropped as if I had been in an elevator. But the ride didn't go down incrementally...one floor down...next floor down...ding, ding, ding with every level down. The sensation was one of falling at an incredible speed and down a blackness that seemed to pull me towards nothing but oblivion.

The experience couldn't have lasted more that a few seconds, but it felt like a lifetime. I was terrified. I was horrified. I had only one context for the experience - Hell!

A few years before I had attended a couple of charismatic Christian churches. After studying with them for a while I decided their laws and restrictions didn't make sense and went back to meditation based on no particular philosophy or tradition. Just me picking up where I had left off - checking out the frontier of consciousness and the mind.

When I experienced that darkness...that falling, falling sensation...that insurmountable fear, my default setting was "This is bad! This is wrong! This is the devil's work." And I stopped meditating. I trashed any books that were unsanctioned by the churches and attempted to live as a good  fundamentalist Christian wife. That was it's own kind of Void...but that's another story.

It's been over thirty years since I had that experience, and I have not felt it again. And neither have I attempted to meditate in that way. I learned something of how really intense and dangerous the mysterious, the esoteric, the unknown can be for the dilettante and uninitiated. But my curiosity has not deserted me. I've learned to creep up on the Void from different angles. I get close to the edge, but always far enough to not get sucked in by the vortex.

All this to say that this time the Void didn't come during meditation. It came instead as a familiar pattern of pain and rejection from my narcissistic father... a terrifying sensation in it's own right. But this is not about father bashing. Instead, I've finally come to the realization that the Void I experience
will never be filled by him. And this realization came across from this line by Emily Carding from her Tarot of the Sidhe:

"I give wholly to the Void, to be holy in The World."

The sentence struck me like lightning. I understood it immediately as this - if I want to stop the fear and terror of falling I need to give myself over to the acceptance of it, whatever 'it' is. Not as a helpless victim, but as a powerful creator of my own experience. 

With this understanding I looked at what benefit I have gained from the experience of falling for the naive idea that this time the narcissist will be different. This time he will hug me and hold me and tell me how much he loves me. This time he will apologize for all the ways he hurt me. I know logically none of this is going to happen, but the little girl's heart is always full of hopeful innocence. And as far as my relationship with my father is concerned I have stayed a child.

Until now...

This weekend I accepted the terms of endearment. I gave myself wholly to the Void. I fell fearlessly into dark feathered arms and landed in a world were the perspective is upside down...the sky is below and the trees grow above me...and suddenly it all makes sense. I hang myself up on the relationship because I am growing my Soul. I am cultivating balance and temperance. I am learning to pick myself up, spread my wings, and fly. 

All these years I have been falling. Time after time I'd fall into the trap and cry. I'd find comfort in the people who love me in a way that lifts me up again. And now I get up on my own. This was the second synchronicity.

The third was this:

"Priestess of the Void"

The words represent the first lesson from an on-line course by Renee Starr. Consecration follows initiation. It feels una-void-able and perfectly timed.

Welcoming the Wild Child

I'm writing of the Wild Child. *

Whether we are aware of it or not, we all have a Wild Child inside of us. It's the Child we were told must not interrupt adults, or get too dirty, or scream when angry and hurt. It's the Child that had to share when she didn't want to, or stop playing much too soon, or say please and thank you without understanding why. It's the Child that had to hurry past that interesting glob on the sidewalk, and was told not to stare at people or talk to strangers.

I'm not going to say these 'because-I-said-so' messages we learned where wrong or useless, I taught my children these very lessons. But the inescapable rules of society and civilized living have an effect beyond that which is intended. The Wild Child we were when we were born soon after becomes an outcast, an orphan, a wandering homeless shadow in the landscape of the Soul.

There are many books, articles, and blogs one can google to find much more on this subject. But I want to share how I found my Wild Child and why it was so vital that I bring her home to me.

It happened through a dream that led to another dream.

~~~I am in a large, beautiful Spanish villa. There are balconies and verandas full of bright potted flowers, and courtyards green with lush foliage. A Wild Child comes to me and wants to live in my villa. 

"No," I say, and although she is beautiful, I am not sure I like her. She is too wild. She is too much for me.

"Let me make a call and find you a home." Someone else is sure to want to foster her.

But this decision on my part is not what she wants and she disappears into my unconscious sleep.~~~

In the morning I woke up feeling upset and puzzled by my dream ego's reaction. Why, if I have such a large villa, would I not at least offer this orphan a room. Calling a placement agency is not something I would ever want to do.

I shared my dream with my dream circle who followed the protocol designed by Robert Moss, and I came up with an action plan - I would re-enter the dream and see if I could offer my Wild Child a place to live.

That night before bed, I went back into my dream. It was she found me easily, and we roamed the many rooms, courtyards and hidden alcoves of the villa with her leading the way. Wild Child and I bonded quickly and enjoyed each others' company immensely. And, surprise! That night I feel asleep without the usual worry for the burdensome cares of the world.

Then I dreamt this ~~~

It is evening and I am going to my mother's house. It is a much smaller version of my dream villa. I am upset with my mother for having neglected me and I tell her so three times. But she does not understand my feelings. I leave her and feel frustrated. I wake up with my Wild Child energy saying to my mother, "You have always abandoned and neglected me." ~~~

This feeling is my truth. It is the root of my Wild Child's banishment. But I no longer feel victimized by my mother's unconscious behaviors. She did and does her best to love me in a land that is foreign to her and not her true home. I have done a lot of healing work around this tender wound and know that although the rejection of my Wild Child started as a young girl, I do not have to hold my Wild Child at arms' length, or worse yet, banish her existence out of my waking consciousness, just because of cultural norms and mores. That repetitive, deadening pattern of rejection stops here.

The Wild Child comes bearing gifts of freedom of expression through mind, body and soul. She is holy, and wholly the essence of who I am, and who you are. She is as Wild as the animals that roam the Earth and that we take so much for granted. The Wild Child is the key to remembering what is essential to living with magic and grace. Wildness is a treasure we can't afford to lose. When Wildness is lost, our freedom disappears, and worry consumes our living hearts.

My teacher Bruce Gelfand says "Intending Creates - Creating Intends." In my villa there are many rooms and safe places. I invite the lost and orphaned Wild Childs to join me in joyful acts of artistic imagination and playful creativity. And my little mother, clutching her new coloring book and brightly hued pencils, is also welcomed.

*Note: the Wild Child archetype is not the same a feral child who is willfully abused and subjected to inhumane treatment. Also, if you look for google images of Wild Child, you will get a bunch of pictures of half-naked teenagers attempting to model sexiness. This is also is not the Wild Child...

The Thread

I pull on it and
It stretches in a long marvelous way
Unknitting what once was.
I stop the pulling and ask
"Do I really want to undo
these curls
and burls
and whirls
That once made such a....?"
To answer would be to unravel
A different kind of thread.

I let it go...
The thread hangs limp
and lifeless,
ruined...
I want the entire thing
To snap back into place with it's conviction,
Usefulness,
Skill.

Picking it up
And turning it around
I notice that
I can never really see
The wholeness of it all.
There's always a back side,
a blind side,
a dark side,
A place that my hope
Fills in with imaginary perfection.

I drop the knitted threads,
Their limbs all wound around each other
In beautiful utility.
And the way she fell
Hid all the unraveling...

My quick movements
Expose the long thread again
And I ask,
"Is this a dangling of frustration,
A careless moment
When I rushed to reach
An end?"

"No" she says with a sigh.
"It happened when you hugged
The warm furry body
Of your cat,
And she hugged back -
The way only a cat can hug -
Kneading into your softness."

and now Pluto sits on my ascendant

I feel raw and restless after the holidays. 

Usually I find peace sometime before and I want to hold on to that 

But it dissipates and melts away 

In the light of what often feels like too much noise and ‘people fracking’.

That’s what I call it when I yearn for tenderness and round ripeness…

When I feel I must close doors to find respite…

When I long for grandmother’s lap

And godmother laughing in the corners of my heart.

It has nothing to do with lack of love…

I see there is love, but it’s not gentle and soft…

It’s 'I’m all confused but I love you' love…

It’s 'look at me am I ok?' love.

Sometimes I want to sit quietly with them all,

No wine glasses clinking

Nothing in the oven

No plans for the future of the next hour.

I just want to sit and let the stars fall where they may.