Zoe Goes

One of my best friends in the world drove off tonight, shouting out the window. "Bye Kate. See you in the rainbow." We speak the same language. Zoe is two. And like I said, she is one of my best friends. We understand each other. From the heart.

She and her mom and dad are moving up to Seattle, where it rains more and people drink more coffee. The angsty cafe scene and all. Mountains, too. Zoe's mom Brandi is also a good friend, and a very important mentor in my life. Seeing them leave (with bellies full of delicious paneer), feels like saying goodbye to some of the best parts of me. This is metaphorical of course. But, it just seems like Zoe brings out the best in me. My mind gets wide and expansive and my imagination fills with the possibility of impossibilities. We dance with our shadows and fly in flocks through the parking lot. We color our skin blue and give personalities to plastic. We hug like we mean it. I love Zoe. Lots. And I am going to miss her. Lots, too.

Love you Zo.

Blustery Day

It's a blustery day. I think of all of the times that I saw the cartoon "Pooh Bear and the Blustery Day" as a kid. Regardless of the weather, I am still looking for my jar of honey. I laugh. (Apparently to massage my internal organs.)

So what is on my mind today? Patience. I think. Knowing what I want and not knowing how to do it. Here is my crux: I don't know how to move forward. There is all this buzz about getting clear with your desire and then leaving the rest to the Universe. But what do I do while the Universe is working on it? Be patient? Hover? Pull my hair out? Meditate? I exhale. Now what?

(This while the money thing is really in my face, which is great. No doubt very rich material.)

A wonderful community leader gave me a lunch hour worth of his time yesterday, which was a gift. In our hour over hot food, he asked me some really provoking questions. I was able to refocus on big picture, little picture, and peripheral pictures. What am I good at? What am I passionate about? What does my community need? Where can I be most effective? What is it best for me not to do? I'm still chewing on all of that. But is became clear to me that, well, I am going to need some angels. That is what he called the people who help fund your vision and make it real. I feel so sure about my personal dedication to healing work and so congruent when I do it, especially the energy and vibrational medicine work that I am learning and doing now. I also feel very clear that healing is a human right and needs to be available to all people, especially those that don't currently have access to care at all or alternatives to the medical industrial complex, Cartesian model of fracture and split. I feel passionate about both being a practitioner of energy medicines in addition to wanting to make serious and far reaching institutional change. I go back to his questions: What am I good at? What am I passionate about? What does my community need? What am I not so good at? Where does that leave me now? In circles, impatient because I am not really doing either at the moment. I am studying, yes. I am preparing. Good. But what are the next steps, I still don't know. And that leads me to feeling immobilized or encountering resistance. Maybe I should follow my own advice and write...not just my yaya inner stuff, but about the things that I have seen and the issues that I care about: healing, women, earth, and justice. Not uncommon in this neighborhood, but still...

So I will ease off the mate and step back, and be alert to the paths before me when they present themselves more clearly. In the meantime, I write about being impatient. No, maybe I'll try to study more and, well, relax into the flow. (Or at least try.)

The Primordial Teat

Some years ago, just about this time of night, my mother thought she had a belly ache from eating too much pasta. She groaned and rolled over, unable to sleep, or so the story goes. Turns out she was in the initial stages of labor with her first and only child. She eventually went to the hospital and after the sweat and toil of hours of back labor, she gave birth to me. Yellowish, but mostly just fine, I suckled, taking it all in.

SInce that moment, I could say that I've spent the rest of my life searching for the Primordial Teat, the ever giving flow of nourishment, love, and tenderness. Sometimes it has been a hard road. Sometimes not. Today, I am happy to be here. The sunset was outrageous, just like yesterday. The small fingernail shaped pink-white petals of the tree outside my door have made it look like snow has blown into the front hallway. It smells like spring. I feel new energy emerging. I welcome it, and all the creative juices that flow from the Source, that teat from which I drink, even on the verge of my 27th year. Thanks Mom. I love you.

Pot of Gold

The dynamic winter weather of the North Bay offered up a true gift the other day: the end of the rainbow. All the myths and stories of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow...there it was in the field I was passing through, along with deer eating its way through tall grass. In those quiet moments before the sun shifted against the backdrop of thunderous grey, I found moments of contentment; the richness of being with what is, whatever it is.

Abode

A teacher in my life today shared something with me that feels poignant. She was referring to the book the Tao of Healing. She said that the abode is the seat of the mind. It is the place that the mind most comfortably rests. So if you are continually having controlling thoughts, you mind will be most comfortable when it has control. If you mind is often thinking of how it wishes things were different, it will be most comfortable with dissapointment. The same is true with thoughts that we would label "positive". The teaching was not to change your thoughts to all positive ones because even then, when circumstances are challenging, the mind will be filled with swords. The teaching is to watch the mind and to be curious about where it often dwells.

I am taking this in. Being in a period of such transition I am finding myself very uncomfortable most of the time. I feel confused and disoriented about my future and yet there have been few things in my external environment that are overtly threatening or dangerous. Yet, I have felt like my life is at risk. My mind has been seated in thoughts of fear and control. I realize how much I have wanted things to be a certain way because I thought that having control would make the outcome better, or at least being predictable, more safe. Instead, my fearful thinking has wrestled away my sense of adventure and appreciation for what is actually happening. I haven't been enjoying my free time, I have been stressed that I shouldn't have it. Note: no use arguing with what is.

So I have stopped pushing. Talking to a friend the other day (after the OAEC internship let down, ouch) I used the cliche metaphor of feeling like "all the doors I tried to walk through were being closed in my face." She asked, "then why are you pushing so hard?" Well, I need to keep trying, right? If I don't make any effort, nothing will happen. Or not. Things are happening all the time, at every moment. I needed to wait for the tide to change. So for the last few days I have been withdrawing, shining the flashlight into the cobwebby corners of my most familiar and least visited abodes. I screamed and took some baths too. Today having lunch with my cousin (he actually arrived at the restaurant with his own coffee stained cup and just drank tea) at a Chinese place in the city my fortune read "All your work will soon pay off."

The tides are turning? Or, I am in greater harmony with the nature of mind.

Undulations

If I were to try to write about the inner landscape of the last week, I'd first have to know where I've been. Someplace, it seems, between breaths. Waking, maybe, but with the lead head of a hang over. Stumbling, drunk on the elixir of mental illusion and attachment. Little deaths and big ones, little lights and false light. Swirling with stars only at night to guide me.

I am screaming, crying, and silent often. So is the road of transmutation.

Sunken

I think I might just start each of these torn pages (from that journal in my head) with "Ebb and flow..." After an incredible period of deep searching and quiet fulfillment in the last few days, and an incredible healing experience, my heart feels low low low. I feel washed up (now I get where the cliche once got its meaning). And then I breathe and sink my feet into the ground. This is truly a trust walk; I feel on the line.

After days of contemplating how to integrate my clairsentience into my livelihood, and really into my life, I began uncovering deeper questions. This initiated a process of transformation. I am finally beginning to take this skill seriously. This includes not constantly feeling at the effect of other people's emotional energy. My boundaries solidified. This, of course, is something I have been working with a long time, especially in my DV and crisis work. This recent shift feels somehow different. Part of the difference is the sacred intention I made with the new moon: I am going to practice being in the present moment. An intention that I always have, but because of the energetic confusion I experience with others when there are incomplete psychic, physical, or emotional impressions I need to be more vigilant. Often I get really into thinking about the past or future when it comes to feelings. I can't seem to let go of an expression or energetic exchange or I can sense what will be forthcoming with a person or event. While there is something to be learned from process, it has its limits. I reached mine. Each day, twice a day, upon rising and resting, I clear and ground my energy field. I find any incompletes, ask myself why I am stuck and then do some "The Work" (Byron Katie, Loving What Is) style reflection. I have found that within a few minutes, I have cleared all of the unneeded yaya out of my field and can again think and feel clearly in the present moment. What a relief!

This clarity made room for a deep personal healing this weekend. So beautiful. (More on that in a future posting, I seem to be dwelling in the hard feelings right now.) Now I feel frustration and disappointment. Natural steps along the path. Tenzing Rimpoche calls discomfort an important part of spiritual awakening. I concur, and, of course, am having my momentary objections. It hurts. Trying to carve out a life and livelihood that are congruent with my ecological, spiritual, and social values and (in)vocation is a process, just like the turing of the seasons. Yet, I am impatient and at times, afraid, doubtful. I know that a source of this pain is rooted in home and money. I have yet to find a place where I can truly nest. Where I am now is good for what it is: temporary creative thinking and transition. But it isn't long term, I felt that since I moved here. And, it's not the right price. Studying all the things that are fulfilling my desire to align with my (in)vocation takes a lot of time and, well, money. So far I haven't had luck finding a home that can be both sanctuary, study, and community and nature connection. Or a job or source of abundance that will pay for it.

I am asking a lot, but I keep being told to ask for what I want. I was also told to ask myself why I wanted it. To breathe life into my song? To be a part of the solution? To grow? To feel nurtured and supported? All of it. So I am trying to remain hopeful and thankful, even as the waves of feeling discouraged crest. I am following my heart, cultivating faith, and asking for some luck. Hope some might come my way soon...

Gratefully...

Meaning and Myth

After a weekend filled with ebb and flow, I am left with more questions to contemplate.

Where does healing come from?
What does healing mean to me?
Who is a healer?

Just as I was starting to get comfortable with the idea that I am a healer, after much suggestion and support from my community and the Yoniverse, a friend of mine, who I respect tremendously for her integrity and healing presence, said that she really has trouble with the word or identity of healer. At first, upon hearing her say this, I felt a piecing sensation. Was she talking to me? I have always been so mindful of not taking responsibility for the healing that I share in and witness. I have always felt myself as a witness, guide, and medium. We heal ourselves, the Earth heals us. Time heals. Love heals. We heal together. I have had such a dynamic, and often troublesome relationship with the idea of being a healer. I can't escape it and yet I can't own it. And just as I am starting to really let it in, I feel deterred or shaken...

I have fought with the idea of being a healer since I was in my early teens. What is healing? Where does it come from? Who does it? Until recently, I had nowhere to take my questions and there was little in my environment that affirmed my interests. The Mystery had chosen for me a Path that required deep personal healing or Death. I chose to heal.

I am discovering myself daily through this continuing process, and am thankful that I am finally releasing my resistance and going in...

Being a clairsentient empath, it has often felt overwhelming and discouraging. Did I choose this? For many years I thought that I was crazy because I couldn't make sense of the things that I felt, sensed, saw, or intuited. Why was I so sensitive? Where was my place in the world? While I am still discovering the answers to those questions, I no longer wish to questions there validity. So while I completely concur with my friends assertion that healers aren't responsible for the healing of others, that is the domain of the Mystery, the Mother, I do feel that there still needs to be a place for those of us who dedicate ourselves to honoring that process of transformation which brings harmony and wholeness to people, places, and relationships to take refuge and create community. Semantics, yes, but I need to believe that there is room in the world for what the world needs most: healers.

In the making

Anne and I sitting staring at screens. When did moving out to the woods mean mating with your computer? We are designing the first flyer for my Reiki treatments. Luckily, she is a genius with photoshop. I'm making the tea and, well, staring at the screen. My new business cards came today. I pasted the first in the middle of my creatrix chalk board, the place where I mix and stir all of my creative visions and earthly prayers. Although there are moments when I feel so disheartened, as if possibility has up and left me, some wondrous reminder that I am not alone comes from the corner, where it has been all along, reassuring me.

The choices that I am making about my life currently are a statement of deep inner Truth. I am following the song of my heart and finally stepping into what i have know since I was very young: I am a healer.

I move with the living river.

At the teahouse...

Drinking mate in the noonday rain.