the more myself i get...

the more i seem to irritate others

i guess then energy i spend in trying to please others is now going into pleasing myself
but this is difficult for a well trained people pleaser like me to feel easy about ...

i know i don't always manage my new self in the most considerate way

(i should have trainer wheels really)

all this trying out new ways of managing things - new priorities, new thought patterns, new strategies means that so many of my rules have changed that i am almost an entirely different shape

i am often surprised when i look in the mirror that i look so much the same

the things that draw me in are things i cannot easily talk with the others in my life about

like this Jar - i made a concoction with Pixie's help and i have used it in baths in chakra massages i have drunk it i have used it in a painting...

all of which would be so difficult to explain to 99% of the people i see each day

it seems the more i get to know myself the more of a stranger i become to the world around me...

august break

willow at the memory prom

august break 2011

meet Honeysuckle!

august break

my dolphin - she sits on the base of my spine...

i got her when i left a job that required me to be the ultimate martyr and nearly corroded my heart irrevocably...

she symbolises freedom, play, lightness, compassion and motion...

although she is faded now and so inconspicuous -apart from the peaks into the world she gets with low rider jeans (didn't invisage them when i got her)

and her light follows me...

i haven't always chosen the path of freedom and play, but more and more she splashes in my life.

stirring my vital energy

moving me on

august break

soulodge

i am doing soulodge with Pixie Campbell and a whole gathering of wild and sacred women...

this week we are doing work with the plant people

and in my journey this is what i found:


Well my brain had all kinds of ideas about the plant i wanted to use for this... but my intuition and plant people had a whole other idea!

i ended up using Manuka and here is her message to me...

Manuka showed me how she is the one to step in and heal the destruction around her... she has long been undervalued and seen as "scrub" and a sign of poor land management. She was only good for firewood. She grows where little else grows. She is hardy and tenacious (that word again)... She is also the nursery plant for grander trees, kauri, totara, taraire...

Manuka is fodder for sister bee. Recently it has been discovered that Manuka honey has a unique healing property and is clinically tested (that o so important thing in land outside the intuition) to have measurable wound healing properties.
People are suddenly seeing that manuka is a way to make $$$. She is suddenly seen as valuable and no longer summararily chopped down. (i feel a little teary writing this i yearn for that valuing to happen for me)

Manuka helped me see that i am growing on scorched earth - i am repatriating ground - (i see that i am doing that by reclaiming my sacred woman/goddess self, healing generational patterns) the land i stand in is tough and these things have been hard but i am bloody well doing it!

Manuka also spreads many seeds, some come to fruition others die but enough take to make a difference. that helps me to sit with all the creative ideas that whirl through me and be comfortable with the fact that some fall away.. not all need to be successful.

She is prickly if held the wrong way- her sharp little leaves are tough - it is good that she protects herself she has a job to do and it is not to be food for others! AMEN!

She is home to many creatures, weta, ants, birds. By living into my dreams and my truth i nourish others around me... not by sacrificing myself....

I see her showing me that i too must be tenacious, and release the need to be recognised by others. She tells me that my growth is vital to healing, my self and my earth and that protecting myself is valid and right. She said "Your beauty will be seen by those who need to see it. Know that you are worthy of being cherished and of growing. You hold magic".

i will take a photo of the twig of manuka i held to show you but she is so precious to me now... ps i have just realised that manuka surrounded my grandparents bach (beach shack) a place of huge safety and wonderful memories for me...

august break my altar

my altar i am spending more and more time here

August break 2011

sewing up the hems on kapa haka uniforms

at my house today...

cabbage tree bark

Manuka

coprosma leaf

the girls

my wise owl who watches my door

SOMETIMES I

sometimes i feel invincible, bullet proof, made of divinity
and sometimes i feel tiny and crushed and invisible like a shell that has been tumbled against the rocks and all that is left is fragments of me amoungst the sand... unnoticable undifferentiated unknowable.

sometimes i feel joyful and skip in the supermarket and smile full beam at strangers who look grey
and sometimes i see myself as a grey stranger in the mirror

sometimes i feel capable, confident and full of the wisdom that is older than me
and sometimes i just don't know what to do next.

sometimes i make things that flow through me, beauty reveals itself on the paper, the canvas the surface that makes me suck my breath in
and sometimes i make things that are shallow and empty.

sometimes i can find great depths of kindness and connection, love unfettered comes through me and to another's heart - i can feel it hit its' mark
and sometimes i just shut off like a wall.

sometimes the path is clear and i can stride on with my light shining
and sometimes it is so dark and i stumble around banging into the walls and falling on my face.

sometimes i feel the beauty of the world all around me flowing into me and the intricacy of a blade of grass fills me like a breath of light and i feel so blessed
and sometimes the world and its' meannesses are so abrasive that my bleeding spirit looks so ugly to me that i hide

and sometimes i just am.

august break 18th

frost on the fence

Eila and Percy, the neighbours' lamb

august break 12th

silver and copper on my fingers

the peice the lovely Dharma commissioned me to make for Julie who has been through shit... it says Still Julie but stronger - those words are amazing and it has been a pleasure to make

8 august august break

would you every have thought this.....

could do this??

a sneak peek at my dinosaur jacket that a kind woman made a point of stopping me in the supermarket to comment on - made my day!

this just tickled me

willows for planting tomorrow

the 3 kinds of poles - for weaving and for structure

how they were bundled up - this made me gasp

catkins

watering

hoses

plum tree just watered

"I will neither confirm nor deny the presence of sheep poo in my mouth"

august break

this is a fun way of blogging with images...

faith in the future

the orchard

plum

name tags i made

gratitious sheep shot because i can!


this weekend we planted an orchard

mostly stone fruit (i love stone fruit and toy with the idea of being a fruitarian every summer until stone fruit season ends)

we bought heirloom trees from Koanga - i beleive that there is a powerful energy in the old fruit - not bred to look good in a supermarket but to taste good and be good producers in the soil where they have flourished for over 100 years....

as i was watering the trees this morning, in the last of the orange sunrise i felt this surge of hope

planting trees like this

trees that we will need to tend, and prune and nourish - herbal ley coming in spring, comfrey tea brewing....

trees that link me back to the ancestors who came here with hopes and dreams

i see that i have planted them with hopes and dreams

i was seeing the girls and i eating them straight off the tree

imagining making jam

imagining maybe ducks living there

i see that planting something in this way is an act of faith in the future

that i will be around to see the fruition (literally!) of my labour

that i will be doing something that creates a legacy

that by this simple act of digging a hole and planting this peice of magic (what a peice of alchemic magic it is - taking some roots, joining it with budstock, healing that wound and planting it in the soil ... all leading to deep nourishment and joy of the juiciness, in which the seed of the future life of the tree is contained again...

in taking part in this magical cycle i am honouring my life, death, life cycle

and making a gesture of faith in the future

in these times of horror and sorrow (Norway's tragic massacre, earthquakes, tsunami's) this is the most courageous thing i can think of to do...