Living in the Crucible

I am so, so, so ready for a change. 

When you feel stuck, it’s often because something energetic, emotional, physical or spiritual needs to be unraveled before you can move forward.

But unhooking the threads of karma that bind you is no small task. It’s like picking apart a tapestry and re-weaving shadowy demons into white dragons. You can’t leave any loose threads or they’ll form a pathway to let the shadows to walk back in.

We’re entering a six month cycle of great change and, in order to be ready for this change, I’ve been deep in releasing mode. I’ve been burning things, tossing things into the ocean, doing rituals, and throwing a few hissy fits in the general direction of god. (Or in the general direction of my bed pillows, but if god is everywhere, it’s basically the same thing.)

People have been telling me for years that I have self-worth issues. I mean, yeah. I get it. But unearthing your self-worth from the landslide that buried it often means digging without a map - it can be hard to know where to aim your shovel. You have to rewrite the stories you’ve absorbed from others, untangle the knots of normalized abuse, peer at the karmic baggage you may have grabbed - and empaths are so much more likely to carry other people’s bags as well as their own. For the first three decades of my life, I was basically a martyred hotel porter.

When I look at the Facebook highlights of the past ten years, it looks like a litany of loss. Death, miscarriage, getting fired, trying-and-failing-trying-and-failing, getting fired again, breakup after breakup after breakup. My ego has been thoroughly thrashed.

When I scan through the loss litany, relatively unbroken by brag-about-able triumph, my life starts feeling like a crucible whose only purpose is to burn me down to the bone. 

Where I go when the crucible feels extra searing. 

But the up side to all that fire is that I've gotten really good at transmuting dark into light. 

Diving into the depths of the bubbling muck of your soul and swimming around even when you’re afraid you might suffocate and hitting the same problem over and over again from every angle will show you what you're made of - and I'm made of pure tensile strength, baby. I am whittled down. Sometimes I feel like I'm two taps away from breaking, but I haven't broken yet. I've bent, I've danced, I've sobbed like a broken doll, I've set fire to the branches, and I'm still standing. 

I’ve gone from unconscious empath to understanding that if I’m angry for no reason, it’s not because I’m slowly and methodically going insane, it’s because I just sucked up that anger from someone else. I’ve gone from hating myself for being too sensitive to recognizing that sensitivity is my primary superpower. From words that were funny but flagellating to being able to write my story from a place of deeper, if less amusing, compassion. From trapped in the hell of my own head to relatively accessible joy.  

If it took that litany of loss to get me to a place where I’m mostly free of the hell my brain spent most of every day re-building, it was worth it.

But I'm not here to swim in my own stuff forever. I'm not here to heal everybody else. I’m here to feel joy. I’m here to share what hits me in the solar plexus and expands from my rib cage. I’m here to be a gift to the planet, just as you are.

So I’m re-weaving the patterns of my life, unraveling the threads of the images that don’t serve me and tying off all the loose ends. It’s not easy to keep track of all those dangling knots. And just when you think you've tidied everything up, you find a whole new room full of yarn. 

But we can’t be that gift until we see ourselves as that gift. So that’s where my effort is going now. Into the day-to-day process of keeping my energy and gratitude and joy high. Not to heal myself or anyone else, but to know that ascension from the hell of your own head is possible. Because it is. And it’s required.

And sometimes that means spending the evening watching TV and eating ice cream straight from the carton so you can get up in the morning, light the match, and ask what the crucible has for you today. 

My Job Description Involves Angels. So...That's Weird.

In the pilot of Newsroom, one of the main characters says, "America leads the world in only three categories: Number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending."

When realize you've entered a category mocked by Aaron Sorkin, you have some thinking to do. 

Raised in the church of hippie, with a brief dip into Christianity every December, I certainly had a passing acquaintance with the idea of angels. But I never gave them much head space. Because I was an adult with an education, a reasonable grip on reality, and a slight allergy to feeling stupid.

In a Portland bookstore years ago, I passed a magazine rack boasting CHANNELINGS FROM METATRON and made a rude comment. Possibly accompanied by a snort. 

Five years later, everything I dismissed in that bookstore has become part of my daily lexicon. Because I am a channeler. I can ignore it or embrace it, but either way, it's part of me. And, while I'm still not 100% sold on the name Metatron, damn can the dude balance a chakra. 

Aligning my sarcasm with my healing, my channeling with my East Coast education, my love of words with the challenge of capturing these experiences in language, and my tendency to curse while tapping into the divine has become something of a quest.

I've been told by many fellow healers and intuitives that it's time to stop waffling and step the fuck up. "Allow yourself to be seen." "Own your magic." "Learn to embrace your gifts."

I still don't know exactly what that means and if one more person tells me to do it without telling me how I'm going to shriek so loudly they cringe in Timbuktu. 

Here's what I can say, even though stating it so bluntly still makes me nervous: When you tap into the energy of the angels? Holy whoa. You feel your body shift on a cellular level and this sense of peace descend from seemingly nowhere. Sometimes it's a gentle vacuuming of the icky feels hanging out in your stomach. Sometimes it's like getting hit with a horse tranquilizer.

But, and here's the catch: it can't be understood intellectually. Even the word is just to give our human brains something to wrap around. This energy has to be experienced viscerally - and we're a world that lives in its head. 

Straight Up, My Actual Job Involves Angels

Today, I woke up at 3 am - not on purpose, I assure you - and by 4:30 a.m., I was trekking back and forth to my altar to fetch whatever crystal called to me for the person I was working on. I'd plop down on my big red chair, feel into their energy, and the name of an archangel would pop in. So I'd grip my crystal and call on that angel, asking them to send healing energy to land in the person's body, emotions, mind, or energy - wherever they most need it. 

Whenever I'd double check the timezones to make sure the healing landed when the client had requested it, I'd get an angelic eye roll, like, "Woman. I am an unfathomable being of light and power. I've got this." 

Fair enough, angelic being of unfathomable light and power. 

This is maybe a fourth of my collection. I might have a problem. 

Yes, I'm every new age cliche that has a meme on Facebook.

Here's the thing: This using-the-energy-of-angels-to-heal-people-across-the-world thing totally works. Which shocked the hell out of me when I got the text from my first guinea pig.

I can sit in California with a crystal I bought for three bucks and, in ninety seconds, send energy in someone's direction to land hours or days later - and they feel it. A lot of it. Right at the specified time. 

These suckers have cured migraines, helped people sleep the sleep of the well-drugged, helped them feel lighter and happier and more prepared to move through life.

Really. It blows my damn mind. 

I didn't know I could shift energy like this until about a year ago. I didn't know I could call on angels to do healings - whenever and wherever I wanted - until a few months ago. And the discovery was as simple as, "Hold on. Other people can do this. So why can't I?" 

So I did. 

We can all access this kind of power. Especially if we choose not to worry about getting mocked by Aaron Sorkin.

We're a culture that's learned to live detached from our bodies, our hearts, our intuition. Since these things can only be experienced in the body, in that lump of muscle beating in your ribcage and the tender energy that surrounds it, angels can't exist until we learn to tap into these places.

But if I can tune in to this unfathomable light and power, so can you. 

I think that's what I'm here to do - remind people of this. To remind them of how loved, and precious, and needed they are.

And if I can lay aside my well-crafted sarcasm to commune with angels and only feel a little bit silly, so can you.

So until more specific information around "owning my magic" comes through, admitting to the internet that angels are part of my job description seems like a reasonable next step. 

Because I Know You've Been Dying for a Sally Update

I have a weird relationship with a stuffed sea otter. I can admit it. 

It all started when said stuffed sea otter became a stand-in for a child I miscarried a few years back. Things have since escalated. 

Her father and I separated, because he wasn't sure he wanted a stuffed sea otter and I plan on multiple stuffed sea otters. Sally was sad for awhile, but she was comforted by both Roger (her red sea star) and Pony (her silent giraffe pal). But she's pretty sure she doesn't want a sibling. She enjoys being the only recipient of my affection. She'd much prefer to be the only recipient of everyone's affection, but I've warned her about the dangers of getting greedy. 

Sally has developed a sassy side - being a teenager is apparently an inter-species phenomenon. She's started turning Roger sideways and poking those who don't do her bidding fast enough. She pulls up Amazon when I'm not home and uses my credit card. She drives like her sole life goal is to hike my insurance into the stratosphere. 

I never had a security blanket or a favorite stuffed animal as a child. But as a 38-year-old, I've gotten a bit overly reliant on a cheeky otter. She's in my carry-on when I travel. I miss her when I'm gone all day. I sleep with her every night. I tell her I love her. 

While it's a bit strange, maybe it's not unexpected. I don't have a husband or a child or a pet or even a plant that stays alive long enough to see a season change. I honestly never thought I'd get this far along in my life without kids or a partner or a Boston terrier. Humans are designed to love and, if there isn't someone readily available, we will love whatever else we can wrap our emotions around. 

Part of me worries about my devotion to Sally. I'll carry her around like a baby while making tea and look down at her and think, "This isn't normal."

But, really, love is love. Loving Sally makes me happier. Having her around brings me honest-to-god joy, especially when she turns her sass on the new human in my life. We can use all the happiness we can wrest out of the world right now. 

So I make no apologies for Sally. And Sally is unabashedly thrilled with herself, just as she is. 

Yup, she even takes selfies like a teenager. 

Best Defense in a Cheeto Battle

Tomorrow, the day a human-size Cheeto takes to the Oval Office, I will be doing none of the things a concerned/enraged/pick-your-modifier citizen should be doing.

I will not be writing a letter to my senator. I will not be marching for anything. I will not be gnashing my teeth over the state of the world.

Instead, I will drive over the Golden Gate Bridge and down the coast to Half Moon Bay, where I will get a haircut, a massage, and gaze at the ocean. The way we do in California. I will have dinner with magical friends. I will take care of myself.

To do my work for this country and for this planet, I have to take care of myself. I can’t show up in the world from a place of fear or anger or pain because if I do, that’s what I'll spread. 

Enough fear, anger and pain has already been spackled on until we’ve built ourselves a robust cement cage - and wonder why we feel trapped.

We’re not trapped. We have voices and intelligent curiosity and our own gifts to share, gifts that will shift the world in the direction we long to see.

But we have to take care of ourselves so that we can unleash those gifts, that light and that love, in the world. 

So rather than steep myself in outrage (not that I ever object to a little well-placed anger and I fully accept that it may crash my little Self Nurture Party tomorrow) I'll be nourishing myself, and hopefully losing some of these goddamn persistent knots in my shoulders. 

There are no shoulds here. Yes, you want to show up for the world in the way you most believe in. But there’s no one right way to do it. 

For those of you who are marchers and impassioned letter writers, I salute you. For those of you who build movements and change the world for the better with your whirling energy, I bow in your direction.

For those of you who are easily overwhelmed, who know that marching would drain your reserves and somehow never get to the “write letter to congressman” box on your to-do list, fist bump. I'm with you.

Here's something we can do instead: Participate in www.First100Ways.com. 100 small actions that can be done in 100 seconds over the first 100 days the President is in office. After saying for months that I wish someone with my values who understands political action would just tell me what to do already in a way that wouldn't fry my cortex, I was over-joyed when this landed in my inbox. 

(Meaning, I'm pretty sure I invented this. The same way I invented the iPod and iTunes. By grumbling about how I had to wait until morning for Tower Records to open up so I could buy a whole CD to get the one song I wanted. By saying, "I really should be able to magically get this one song right now." LO AND BEHOLD.) 

Know that whatever you do, it’s enough. Know that showing up for yourself and your family and your community is enough. The last thing we need to do right now is beat ourselves up for any perceived failing or lack. Because that’s the energy that helped get us into this tangle. If all you do is help yourself feel better, raise your own energy, you will raise the energy of the world. I promise. From that place, you can take action that will have massive impact, whatever it is.

I love you, fellow Americans, fellow humans on this planet. You are enough and you do enough.

And if you are marching, make sure you bring mittens and a snack.

New Journey Requires Old Pen (Or: Blogging Like It's 2006)

Writing about myself was how I learned myself. Before I understood my extreme sensitivity, before I knew that I was sucking up everybody else's emotion and making it my own, before I had any notion of my own operating system. In those darker years, I would take the mess of my life and feelings and start writing a blog post. By the time I was done, I had cracked open the cement box of whatever was weighing me down and let in some light. 

I adored blogging. Back in 2006, I started a blog called Moose in the Kitchen to help me write everyday. It was my thing for years. Talking about squirrels and feelings helped me sort through the tangles of my life. It helped me feel less isolated in whatever prison I had built in my head. Words were the only real power I wielded at that time. Some of my first channeling came through in that space, though I didn't know to call it that. 

In the years before all this intuitive work, my writing was funny and self-deprecating and, more often than was probably healthy, self-flagellating. But it was a sacred space. My sanctuary. Writing myself to answers felt like magic. It was magic. 

Social media came along and blogging was no longer the only way we could interface via screen. Blogging started becoming used in business and boundaries got confused. Self-sabotage kicked in, as self-sabotage does. I stepped away from writing to focus on my intuitive work and amusing self-deprecation cannon-balled into rampant earnestness. 

But life just doesn't work as well when I'm not playing with words. When you're a writer who doesn't write, the wheels start coming off the bus. It's not noticeable immediately, but after awhile you're hopping down the road in circles, like a dizzy three-legged dog. 

Blogging like it's 2006 means not taking myself so seriously, not taking the words so seriously. I wrote thousands of words every month and none of them had an agenda. Words are here to be played with. Because play is where the magic lives. Magic tends to run screaming when I decide I need my writing to be a certain way or do a certain thing for my life. 

Enough with that, self. 

I want to find the sweet spot between the wild polarities of the blogging 20-something who hated herself because she was locked in a brain that tried to put her in the context of the normal world and the intuitive 30-something who sees so much bright light that she gets a bit overbearing at times. I've been trying to think my way there, but thinking rarely works. Because our brains, wondrous machines though they are, are only capable of spitting back canned recordings of where we've been. They aren't capable of navigating unknown terrain.

Only in the space of imagination and play can that new terrain begin to unfold. So it's time to write myself into a new space instead of trying to think my way there.  

So I'm going to blog like it's 2006. For me. For whoever might want to read it. Not to establish myself as an authority in anything (I am quite literally an authority in nothing except my own journey, and I often need other people to tell me things about that journey). Not to further any quest or agenda I might have. Because agendas are exhaustingly unproductive and quests never lead where you were expecting anyway.  

Since trying to guide my life and my story toward where I think it should go has left me dazed and wondering where seven years went, I'm just going to tell my story. I'm just going to show up to the words the way I used to, the way I love to do, and let them tell me what I need to know.