squeezing through the pigeon hole

(the photo is of a transformation arrow i made releasing old patterns i no longer wanted in my life - from my GoddessLeonie course - www.goddessleonie.com)

I want to start with a little story.





It is about a girl who wanted to save the world. Who felt immense responsibility about always doing the right thing. Who felt other's pain. Who wanted to make a difference. Whose family thought it was funny the way she cried at the animals in the pound who were due for euthansia or the marlin that was caught for "sport".





This girl decided, at 16, to become a vegetarian.
She beleived that animals were sentinent and had spirits and didn't want anyone else to take on the responsibility for their death.
If she had to eat meat (flesh of any kind - including sea food and fish...) then she'd dispatch it herself offering gratitude and taking on the debt of it's life....





It kind of became a centre point to how she saw herself, moral, responsible, kind, crusading.





She felt a little self righteous about it all.





and now that girl is 44.





that was 28 years ago. (TWENTYBLOODYEIGHT!)





And now the womanthatwasthatgirl is listening to whispers about how her body may need to eat meat. Which was reinforced (in a very loving and non judgemental way) by her accupunturist - she went with exhaustion and forgetfulness....





Bob suggested it was time to let go of that picture of myself,(ok it is me i am talking about !) time to release that lovingly, that rigidity to fall away...





and Bob the accupuncturist gifted me this poem by St Terese of Aquila

" To enter into the world within

Love must be awakened.

For Awaken Love in us

Let go Let be

Be still in Gentle Peace

Be aware of opposites

Learn mindfulness and forgetfulness"

To me this means to truely love you need to release, be all about being and not doing, and be present in love.





Is holding onto the doctrine i set for myself all those years ago


serving me? Is it loving? Is it an action full of love or an action full of sound?





Am i finding the middle ground?





Am i open to change





and if i am what possibilities await me?





This is the second time this month i have been called to relenquish one of my big stands (the other being how important it was for me to prove how terrible my relationship with my mother was) and the release of that as an archetype, a way of constantly being, is just incredibly loving and liberating...





Could this be something else to jettison gladly?





How would the world look through non vegetarian eyes???

the value of a good scarf

1. they induce jaunty. Jaunty is wildly underated as a pick me up.

2. colour. Colour is also wildly underated as a pick me up.

3. softness. That soft permanent caress when you wear a scarf is so sensual i think it is illegal in some countries. (Why anyone would choose a scritchy scarf is beyond my realms of understanding but then i can't do high heels coz they hurt)

4. hiding wrinkles or other acts of time and hormones (this includes hickeys). When any blemish to your beauty appears in the neck region a scarf can save errant thoughts of plastic surgery... and it also leads to 1,2 and 3 ...

5. Shifts boring into interesting... jeans and tshirt?... meh... jeans tshirt and scarf? "OOO LA LA".

6. Shows off your creative abilities (see mycrochetherapy blogspot) and helps to maintain your brain - all that left brain rightbrain brain gym stuff.

7. Scarves last - jeans get holes in the knees, tshirts get olive oil stains (well most of mine do) but scarves last and last and last.

8. Vis a vis point 7 - you can often buy good second hand ones as they are lasting wardrobe items... so you can save the planet as well as get your jaunty on!

9. You can always help out if someone needs a tourniquet.

10. You can secure bad guys if you make a citizens' arrest (or have any other need for handcuff type items)

11. Blue scarves heal sore throats and help your expression and speaking up for yourself.

12. Blind man's bluff, pin the tail on the donkey, bang the pot etc are only possible with a good scarf.

Warning...although not in the least exhaustive this list may have you running out to buy scarves galore... remember the sobering end Ms Isadora Duncan came to - the combination of ridiculously long scarf and convertible car is not a good one - this said

scarf yourself happy

just being

After talking about lumpy bits yesterday....

and then about seeing myself i have decided to ammend that to seeing myself with love

because when i look around me i see creatures like my cat

he is sitting here beside me -

curled up on the softest cushion he can find -

in full sun -

a stretch here,

a lick there -

alert to changes but able to soothe himself and then settle back into bliss

and i realise he puts no pressure or judgement on himself, no shoulds or deadlines or burdens...

he just is

and when he comes with love - it is unclouded and full and warming

he can be real because he fully sees himself - he meets what needs he can and asks for help with the rest....

so i will follow Pippin's example and find a place in the sun today....

i hope you do too

the lumpy bits

i was talking to my friends the other day about the marks of motherhood and age on our bodies.

the sags

the lumps

the scars

the shifts

and one of the souls (who is more evolved than me) could truely celebrate the fact that these were signposts in her life- a signal of the journey she was on - the adventures and joys that have lead to her being the woman and mother she is.

and when i grow up i want to be like that

but right now the lumpy bits seem ugly

and i know i have bought into the youth culture and the myth that beauty is on the outside (and this is why i so seldom look in the mirror)

but i am just having one of those days where the lumpy bits are what i see...

and seeing this pattern of focusing on the lumpy bits and not the journey, or even the bits that are still smooth floors me

i see i focus on the parts that bring pain

the parts that make me say mean things to myself - as if i need to continually confirm that i am unworthy because to say otherwise would crumble so many understandings i would have to stand somewhere new...

so i am making a committment to just see myself...

that means a committment to be open to seeing the lumpy bits and the not so lumpy bits and the bits that are lumpless....

just to see myself

i can leave the loving the lumps for later when i have what it takes to make the leap to the new place to stand

but right now i will just see myself

all of myself

and notice

TELLING OUR STORIES

i don't usually use capitals

but the title is in capitals today because more and more i am being prodded to see how essential stories are in our lives.

when i say essential i mean life saving.

not some pretty little add on that you can only make time for if you are a child, or you have a child, or you are a librarian...

but stories are ESSENTIAL, CRUCIAL, VITAL.

We are truely genetically programmed to learn through stories - that is how we learnt as cavemen... we sat around the fire, cramming mastadon into our gobs and hearing about how it was only by creeping up slowly that Ug managed to get close enough to get a good shot...

and so we learned and it was easier next time...

We passed myths from generation to generation because within them lies the meat of our souls...

the clues to the building blocks of who we are as humans

the blueprints for how we get out of sticky messes

of how we are not alone

and that is the crux of it for me...

So many of us in the Western world feel alone.

There are many ways to reach out (which is exactly what i do when i type away here on my couch in New Zealand... hoping to be heard)

and technology can aid that

but the power of story is being lost...

but i was blessed with a storyteller Grandad

and to meet Tanya Batt, a New Zealand Storyteller..

http://www.imagined-worlds.net/DisplaySite/ and learn from her about how story is like a stool with 3 legs - one the story, one the story teller and one the audience... how these need to balance and accomodate each other... how it is dynamic and alive -

and TV - as engaging as some stories on there can be (damn it, i even cry at some advertising) it is not alive in that same way...

and now we don't sit around the fire and just tell the story of our day, or the story our grandparents told us...we lose that path to learning - that connection to each other through our humanity....

i had a miscarriage 3 years ago.

It was inutterably sad.

But it was only when i was open about my grief, and our loss that others opened up. I heard how i wasn't alone mourning a child i would never hold in my arms. And within the space of sharing that story both myself and the others i shared with could truely comfort each other. And some of those wounds were decades old, and had never been heard, let out in the light before....

And i hear about people who have a crisis of confidence in their own lives and make radical and often painful changes. And i think if only they spoke to me - i could tell them it is not just them who question so deeply, digging into their souls, that the ordinary parts of their lives seem, for a time at least, meaningless...and then with all that digging new things grow...

And i spent some time with my beloved friends yesterday - people i have formed a bond with, people i don't see every day, but who hear my soul when it talks, or cries or jumps for joy...

And we told our stories.

We were authentic.

Some of it was painful, some hilarious.... but we became joined by our truths and that although we live radically different lives, the same threads of humanity run through our stories, our longings, our secrets, our dreams, our lives both seen and unseen.

this is part of the gift of authenticity, of clarity

but it also the key to being human

Please tell your story.

and thankyou for hearing mine.