In celebration of the holidays, I'm going to post an audio recording of one of the Christmas stories from my book March of the Animals every Thursday.
I love these stories so much. I hope you enjoy them too.
In celebration of the holidays, I'm going to post an audio recording of one of the Christmas stories from my book March of the Animals every Thursday.
I love these stories so much. I hope you enjoy them too.
"She took to plodding rather than skipping and never allowed herself to think of deer in tutus again."
Today, I rescued my Christmas squirrel from storage. Covered in glitter and toting a festive red acorn, he’s a bit of a joke to the tree squirrels outside my cottage windows. I'm pretty sure a squirrel just fell off my roof laughing. I’m concerned.
Lately, I’ve been noticing the words coming out of my mouth and how they reflect what’s going on internally.
Chances are good that precisely zero squirrels are laughing at my jolly, if rather effeminate, Christmas squirrel. There is no wildlife judgment. But it’s a bright reflection of where I’m judging myself.
Maybe it was the light of the full moon or maybe it’s starting two businesses at the same time, but all of my darkest fears and worst patterns have been making a fine showing this week. Realizing in horror how much scarcity and lack I still feel, when shouldn't I be past that already? Beating myself up for minor infractions that are actually just normal human circumstances, and shouldn’t I be past that already?
Self-judgment has been flying fast and thick. Now I’m applying it to squirrels, who have probably never judged a thing in their lives beyond the likelihood of that hole hiding this nut.
Shadowy revelations aside, I’ve simply been pushing myself too hard. So today I cancelled my (thankfully light) day and climbed back in bed with gingerbread tea, kindle, and stuffed sea otter. And the squirrels have gone blessedly silent.
One of my favorite ways of grounding myself when I’m flailing or disconnected from my body is to look at what’s in front of me.
Pumpkin, left over from the season of squash. Paper crane, folded out of a brightly colored napkin by my aunt and placed on my plate at Thanksgiving. Wooden box filled with essential oils. Crystals in a blue bowl. Candles in seasonally-appropriate scents. Tiny pinecones, given to me by a six-year-old who assured me they were magic. Giraffe in full lotus hanging from a silver tree. Framed print of the last Calvin & Hobbes cartoon ever drawn, the one I read to my Dad when he was dying, given to me by my boyfriend last Christmas.
Deep breath in, oxygen out. My face, pale in the light of the glowing screen, reflected in the window before me. Flame flickering, warm and golden, in a room at dusk.
Today has been rough. A lot of emotion - sadness, grief - has been appearing out of seemingly nowhere. That happens sometimes. Stuff collects without release, or something old decides to have one last hurrah before exploding in a shower of sparks. I don’t know and I don’t need to know.
But I do need to write, because I haven’t written regularly in a long time and it’s time to jump back in. It’s been a year of transition and transformation, one of grief and of joy. I don’t have many of my stories written, because I was busy with other things. But, as a writer, I can’t let myself be busy with other things for too long or the overflow begins to rise to dangerously tsunami-like levels.
Writers need to write.
We write to clear, connect, create, share. We write to put words to what’s swirling around inside us, even when the words don’t come or sound disconnected and discombobulated, as I suspect these do.
What is in me that still needs to come out? I don’t know. But I’m hoping that if I sit down to the writing every day in December, I’ll find out.
Welcome to the Yule (B)log! I’ll be posting every (week) day in December because daily blogging is one of my favorite ways to jump back into writing after a hiatus - it slices through perfectionism and allows me to capture moments I wouldn’t otherwise.
Everything feels like it’s zinging ahead at warp speed. It also feels like it's moving as slow as blackstrap molasses. Life so enjoys its contradictions.
Sign of the times, I suppose - and these are very interesting times. You’re feeling it too, I’m sure. Like everything you thought about your life has suddenly flipped inside out and situations that were idling in the garage are suddenly launching forward, sometimes straight through the still-closed garage door. While other situations have unexpectedly come to a slamming halt or changed tracks entirely.
Astrologically speaking, things haven’t been this interesting since the ‘60s and, as we all know, the ‘60s were a decade of massive change.
Spiritually speaking, we’re receiving great influxes of light. Like we’re being downloaded with what we need to shift the planet away from destructive patterns that humanity has found itself entrenched in. While this involves flux and the break-down of certain systems, I believe the possibilities are far greater than we can currently conceive.
I believe my job - and yours as well, if you’re reading this - is to hold that expanded sense of light and love and possibility. To send that love to the places in the world that are being deeply challenged. To send our brightest rays of light into places that are feeling the shadow.
In a session I had last week with one of my writers, I said that we don’t feel the shadow unless we're being touched by the light.
When those shadows crop up in my life, when I feel the deeper spirals of areas of challenge that I’ve been working on for so long, I try to remember that we only feel the shadow when the sun is moving over us.
I believe it’s our job to dream bigger than we ever have, both in our own lives and in what’s possible for this spinning blue orb on which we live.
Some are diving bravely into the light and the shadow, some are resisting with all their very powerful might. As I develop my fledgling business I’m seeing both - in others and in myself.
My shadows show up in my frustration with others, always places where I’m deeply frustrated with myself in a way I don’t fully see yet, so it has to be shown to me in the guise of someone in my life. My resistance shows up in money - another spot of historic shadow. (Oh, money.) Intellectually, I’m beginning to understand that money is simply another channel of energy as well as another way to see the reflection of where we still want growth. But emotionally, I still sometimes get sucked into the morass. (Oh, the deep sucking morass of suck.)
Money collects so much shame and so many shoulds. I should have more than I do, I should have worked harder, I should have worked better. I should be working on my writing but I’m working on money, I should be working on my writing but I’m working on money. I should be saving more, I should be spending more.
See how it’s all work? Hard and contradictory and there’s just no winning. Locking myself in with the brain gremlins and letting them yell at me is the surest way to stay in the swirl.
My task now is to breathe through each moment. When in doubt, make sure I’m inhaling oxygen - in and out, in and out. My job is to look for what feels fun, what feels like play. To inhabit my body and life fully. To write my story without judging my story or how I tell it. To see myself in others and ask myself to take any frustration I feel and look for that source of frustration in myself rather than spackling it all over the person who’s reflecting it back to me. To take things seriously while holding them lightly.
We all have a deeply important job, and it's more important than ever. My question is - and I would genuinely love to hear your answer - what feels like your task now? What feels like the best way you can be you? Which is, in the end, is the very best way you can contribute to the experience we're all sharing here on this earth.
If you've been working too hard and vehemently not practicing what you preach - "take care of yourself! take naps!" she croons blithely while waking up at o'dark thirty, reaching for her laptop, and going under for ten hours - a face swollen with poison oak and an optometrist who says "how did your eyes get that much worse in a month?" is a bitch slap to wake up. We teach what we most need to learn. It's why I'm always on about self-care and self-love and connecting with yourself. Because I will actively and insistently not take care of myself - I don't have time! I need to attack my to-do list! I need to make money!* - until my body is required to battle with a vicious plant and basically blind me to make me stop.
* fear, fear, fear - something I remember when I'm taking care of myself
I can't do the work I do - write and create and channel - without taking care of myself. First. Not as an after-thought. Not after my body wrestles me to the floor and makes me beg for mercy.
Every morning is for me, not for work. I need to run or dance daily. Every breakfast is to be eaten on the deck in the sun, with no devices and no distractions. Every meditation is to find out if my heart has something to say or if it's just my head hosting a gremlin party, cackling and poking my fear-centers with their pitchforks. I need to plop down in front of my altar and re-find the peace. If the day goes south at any point, I need to haul my butt right back there and remind myself of what is true. Pull my thoughts into the center of my head and drop them into the calm well of my heart. Peace, not noise.
Because writing from my head doesn't do anything for anyone. Thoughts, old voices, static. But when I'm taking care of myself, I get pulled. Pulled into something that needs to be said, something that comes from a place of love and occasional near-tears. That's when it connects and resonates and the magic happens.
Bonus: More naps and less worrying.