misplaced mama

My soul sister Leigh encouraged me to read my previous post (The Apocalypse), record it and share it here. I haven’t read any writing out loud since I was 23 and would put down my waitress tray on spoken word night at Cafe Luna in Hollywood and break out the flow. I was brave back then. And now I think mostly just Ugg Outlet, Air Jordan Outlet, Christian Louboutin Shoes And Woolrich (only to name a few) are my only readers… and they aren’t real people anyway.

I offer you my voice.

He drives, his hat on crooked, his right hand rubs my upper thigh. I weave my fingers into his and squeeze, help him rub deeper into my flesh.

I crack the window a couple inches. Like a vacuum my face sucks the air in. I open my mouth and catch it as it comes through. I’m so hungry for the wet nothing of night force.

To say these roads aren’t straight is an understatement. But the deep curves and twists no longer cause us a panic or pause. Because of practice, intuition introduces us to every corner a hair before it appears and we respond with attention, hugging the line and watching for deer. This does not mean we can’t crash and die. These roads are known for their deathly sheets of ice. But we take the risk; it’s so damn scenic, the journey is worth it.

We are in the center of the forest on the “wrong” side of the hill and we face the “wrong” direction. For close to 6-months, we only get a glimpse of daily light, a small slice of sky might open and if it does you run right under it. The road wraps against the bottom of Chuckanut Mountain, the only place where the Cascades slope down to meet the craggy line of the sea. This narrow valley unfolds into salt water, so it’s not only dark, but it’s wet and when it’s cold, it’s ice.

I’m scared. My body rolls in psychic discomfort and opens the mental door for ghastly visuals to walk in, mostly involving swerving spirals until we reach the edge of something and free fall into flames. I have to go there, though, if only for a second. I don’t know bliss or grace until I juxtapose it completely with gnarly, demonic moments of reason

The voice drops in with the air, rides on the molecules of gas. It’s loud and deep like the original echo of creation.

What are you afraid of?

Death.

Death? You’re scared of birth! Now listen. This year is Mother, and she’s ready to give birth, she’s real pregnant. You go with her, be in her, step over the edge and bring it all back home.

He puts his hand back on the wheel and our elbows touch over the middle console. A song we both like comes on. It’s the one about sunrises being made for people like us who don’t like to sleep. We press our elbows deeper into each other. I look right and can see the stripes of the freeway through the pines, moving parallel with us, reminding me that we could always be going somewhere faster but I appreciate the slower show, icy or not. It’s riskier. I know. But I trust. The road. The dark. The ice. This Mother who brings a birth-like-death, approaching behind me. Ready to bind and gag the hell out of me and force me to surrender to it’s feathery touch so I can slide down that bright light birth canal, open my mouth up like it’s the first time and scream yes.

The Mayans left the space blank. The Bible wants us to know a sea of fire. The Hopi’s say Look! The ocean jumped up to touch the sky.

What could our ancient teachers want us so badly to know? What is so powerful about where we are right now?

It’s creation story time. The story doesn’t create us anymore. We create it. It’s not that the words don’t matter, but it’s mostly actions that count.

Gather the Tribes. Design Fertility and Abundance. Commune and Expand. Give it Up to the Gods. Manifest, but don’t just bring in, you gotta let it out and give it away. Dream the light into Reality. Be specific. Open your Heart even if you have to force your shoulders back down your spine. Practice Simple Complexity. Look between your third eye. Be knee deep in wild burdock. Don’t just inhale. Exhale. Weave deep connection: Me, You, Earth and Beyond.

Christ is not going to return. He is already here, waiting to be unleashed with wild, unconditional love and spicy adventures. The Goddess is not just a myth to be told, she is real, wide-eyed, head thrown back, squats over a planetary pool of turquoise and reds, of feather beds and fields of cotton hammocks under apple trees and pushes. Buddha doesn’t wonder a thing.

The end of the world is a tasty metaphor. Nothing ends; it’s all infinite beginnings with 10,000 paths to choose from.

We re-remember we are spirits communing with the flesh, holding the helix experiences in pure energy within pure energy. That we are limitless life and movement. We are perfection in stillness and vibration in rest. We are morphic resonance. We are spread thick. We make space for what’s to come, we don’t cram ourselves only into a body because finally we see, we can step over and back wherever we want.

We are free.

This year we go back to the roots of the Earth, back to the ancient knotted, twisted roots of wisdom and knowledge embedded in the soul of the soil. This year we grow deep future roots. Our feet re-member and our head projects Higher. Our center stays in the moment.

This year we reach high for something saturated in galactic, popping in star shine, pixelated with cosmos, and foggy with nebula blankets. We become the future, the ones who make the leap and then begin to fly.

We are miraculous energetic orgasmic organisms evolving and we can’t do it alone. So we commit to commitment. We practice accountability. We share in the honor of being humans together. We not only manifest to attract, we offer up to freely give, to feed the spirits hunger for our attention. We relieve the Self of the pressure and offer the extra joy to every.single.person we encounter.

The ancients will chant us through the psychosis and doubt; they will restructure our DNA and heal what weighs with ancestral memory. We will feel discomfort and confusion. We will feel alone. In interesting times illusions will try to pin us down and chat up against our ear but we won’t listen. There will be bells and chants, the oms and the hums, the beads of prayers, songs of our children and whistles of the birds that are spilling in every corner of the universe, dark and light. Listen. Hold on to the sound and listen. Things like this will pull us through.

Let’s drip each other with honey and then send each other off to the tomb/womb. We will lie down on jade floors and we will massage each other with pink salts. We will rest. We will watch. We know that there is no time; that there is plenty of time; that time longer matters.

We are born into evolution, a revolving door where inside and outside are love. A space that has always and never happened before. A time we have talked about since forever, since we were born we knew we’d be the ones to hold space for such a shatteringly brilliant spectacle of love and compassion, creation and innovation, wildfire and wild abandon.

We should probably just let death become us all. We need to embrace this apocalypse of the Self.

This is universal Alchemy. Pick your potion. Light your fire. Watch it burn. Gather what’s left. Sprinkle it in your garden. Eat what grows. How romantic is this?

The tsunami comes through us and invites us to get swept away. The volcano explodes and melts us with the molten lava, asphyxiates us with the ash. These stories are here, these prophecies, to remind us. We are the Blue Kachina Star. We are our Judgment Day.

Pay attention. The sky will swirl. The ocean will lift. The wind will whip. Like always. The systems will crumble and be confused, will hold on for life. We can’t run from shelter, we are the shelter. We can’t run from death, we are the death. We can’t be scared to be born, we are crowning already, our heads squeezing out to a world so new and true, it’s only what dreams are made of.

This is the apocalypse people and it’s beautiful, perfectly beautiful.

As a kid it was the smell of new leather shoes that we certainly couldn’t afford but bought anyway, and piles of leaves burning up the way on Kidder Farm where we got our milk until the late 70’s. It was my mother creating countertops covered in apple breads with nuts and pastry fold-overs filled with canned figs and berries from the neighbors bushels. Fall in the Northeast is idyllic; it’s eye candy and soul relief after the thick stickiness of summer. It’s the refrain between two eye blinding brights; the golden sun and the white of winter snow. Autumn brought a new year of school, which marked me a year older, a year different. A letting go summer’s freedom, my old leather shoes that my toes pushed into, long days under the yew tree daydreaming my future, letting go of my past. Manifesting. My life now, no doubt.

Autumn in the Northwest is different and the same. It’s the gate between perfect weather and not so perfect weather. It’s your last moments of golden hue and long hours outside. It’s your guide into grayness where you harvest, store, savor, plan, infuse, bottle, ingest. The past four years that I have lived here have been all Autumn, my prolonged season of free-falling, embodying that leaf that just twirls in the air, caught in some air stream or attached to a single spider web suspended above it’s next destiny by a branch.

I have obviously experienced and enjoyed the micro-seasons of my macro, tasting the fruits of summer, freezing my toes in the waters of winter and fertile at first sight of spring buds. But over all, I have been in a Death Season, grasping at what I was: an actively birthing and breeding mother and reaching forward to a new phase that was pure mystery. It’s been a long grieving period, not really want to die or step out of my roles that had gotten comfortable, but also a deep knowing that I can’t rush it the process, that trust is essential to allow the end to come. Trust is essential.

Observing the process I could possibly say these were the most stressful four years of my life as well as the most beautiful; they were searching, serving, longing, receiving, hurting, questioning, moving. They were full of planting seeds and making milk. Of walking wet dark forests and lying against bright lime green farm valleys. Of being washed over by the sea, heated to an amber glow and whipped by fire, knocked down by wild howling wolf wind and swallowed by brown, wormy, muddy earth. It’s been interesting to die, to be alchemized and potentized. It’s interesting to watch yourself step outside yourself and walk away from you, saying goodbye.

Nothing is quite as hold –your- heart and gasp-in beautiful as a deciduous death. The texture and colors and movement are meccas for eyes that long to know the need and desire to Let Go. Because in that there is a hopeful truth: the leaf falls into something great, something that is all that Was, Is and Will Ever Be. Death is so lovingly supported by Earth. As everything falls, we are cradled by the essence of life, all encompassing compostable unity of the broken down. And from there being born is simple.

I think of our world right now in the Season of Death, in the state of Autumnal Magic. What is happening out there is ghostly and evolutionally beautiful. We are becoming a skeleton of what we once were; a memory of what we have been clanking forward, bones chattering, cold and skinless. We are all dying, all around this amazing place. The surrender is the hardest part, the trust that we are going to be supported by our Home, by our Ground, by the foundation we have build for lifetimes.

I hope my dying has been a beautiful expression, somehow it feels that way to me. My prayer is that I am falling into supported ground, a place to gather and rest, and bow down to who has come before me, and sit in faith with the harvest that death does bring. My prayer is that the world’s death is a beautiful as a newborn being born into the hands of a hormonally high Mother and we are loved and nurture as new being ready to Live.

I believe in everything. Mama, don’t you? How can you not believe in everything? The stars and the moon. God and zombies. Flowers and placentas, too. Everything. It’s so beautiful. Why don’t people just believe in everything?

I had a moment of clarity last week. My well had been running dry and I had been tapping into post apocalypse supply of energy to get me through the days.

I’ve been in the closet with the jaguar, eye to eye, no illumination to this practice, no iphone flashlight app allowed. The answer is in the darkness surrounded by the glow of the animals eyes, like daggers they reveal enough of my insides to really question my choice to be human.

As usual grace steps in and saves me. Whapio, my midwifery teacher, friend, and wise elder came over and we exposed my 8 year old and 6 year old placentas (mia and sulas) which had been frozen since their births.

We laid out the fly to our camping tent across my new leather ottoman in my living and first opened Mia’s. I never saw hers at the time of her birth. She was born wildly into the arms of our midwife, and her placenta followed quickly . She had some trouble with breath and while her dad and I blew life force into our newborn, the assistant had taken the placenta and wrapped it in about 15 plastic bags and placed it in the freezer. The placenta then lived in our freezer in Los Angeles until it was transported and lived in two more states and in 7 different freezers. I got to spend time with Sula’s after she was born softly into my arms under the water. All involved noticed what a sparkly little gem of a placenta it was. We made a print of it and wrapped it and froze it. It has lived in 2 states and 5 different freezers.

Mia’s was heavy, weighted, large and it slid out with a thump that sent orgasmic chills under my skin. The smell brought me not only to birthspace, but to MY birthspace, the fresh smell of the human experience once again clung to my air. It wasn’t rancid, it wasn’t foul. It was Blood. It was Life. It was my insides, the place where I held my babies.

{the wise barn owl, her heart leads her, she wears no masks, she is magic}

{so ALIVE and understanding the presence of her very own root system, our connection}

We spent time with it, an hour, moving it, examining it, talking to it, thanking it, but mostly just listening. It comes with a story, the first narrative of inner life, it holds the hieroglyphics, ancients imprints of our internal world, a galaxy of desire and choice, the place were we all have lived, where we all decided to be born. It is the beginning of our egg, it is from the karma of own mother, the idea of the life in motion, stuck to my wall and stuck to her. Nothing short of a fucking miracle, a vessel for godly gas exchange, a tunnel for love and matter, of knowing and mystery. How can we toss it aside as worthless flesh? We listen. It has stories about who we are and why we are here, and where we have been.

{Sula’s maternal side, where her and I began this life’s relationship beyond egg and spirit. Her and I have been many places together}

{the fetal side of Sula’s, a wise lil one, a gem, a pearl, a teacher, a gift}

Holding the sacred text of my daughter’s journey as well as my own as her Mother, the villous tree coming together and creating cotyledon villages and timepieces, I learned nothing I didn’t know, but was whispered exactly what I needed. This isn’t about telling the future, it’s about practicing the mystery of the moment. I had regretted all these years not doing something with their placentas, (I ate their sisters) but now I regret nothing. I am so grateful that I still had these, especially grateful to have had all these years living with these girls before experiencing this. It’s profound to watch your daughter give love, authentically and almost meditatively to her own placenta. It is an affirmation that we are not separate from where we come from, that we can’t be denied access to our own wise and well-traveled paths.

{whapio and sula listening}

This day was a slice of life fully courting the paradox and riding the waves of the flux and knowing for sure the Earth, the Universe is the most perfect Home finding it’s way. My daughters’ hands moved blood through the still vibrant placentas, sculpted and shaped their original Twin and it became very clear that this mattered, that The Grandmothers, the Roots of the cosmos, the Eye of the Eternal Omnipresent, somewhere in there, up there, around here, are showing us The Way.

{the beautiful veil we saved. whapio has passed on a ritual of keeping a bit of the veil and allowing it to dry and watch as the stories upon it unfold…}

I hold these stories sacred, personal, some things will be left unsaid. Mia and have a lot of work to do, and we have a long life together to do it in; we are newer to each other but with a important partnership: she truly has crowned me as her teacher and she truly comes to learn leadership. We work on gently massaging each other in ways to untangle the anger and free up the knots. She has many unique gifts and I’m her assistant in finding them. Sul’sa placenta went from looking little turtle shell into blooming like a flower and revealing the most pearlescent piece of her world. She is powerful healer and humble goddess. She is quiet but inside she holds bold beauty, beauty that I know will change the world. I needed to remember that her and I go way back, like far back, from the beginning of time.

{we come from such sparkle and shine, fabulous and divine}

We all are given the medicine when we truly need it. The medicine is Us.

{on a less stream of consciousness note: if you have your placenta frozen and not sure what to do with it, it’s absolutely not too late to make magic and medicine with it. If your children are into it, it’s amazing to include them in the journey. Mine are now soaking in grain alcohol and will be there for another month or 2. Then we will practice alchemy with them using fire and salts. They will eventually, after a process be turned into a more homeopathic type of medicine. But before that I will take a little piece of each and bury them somewhere special. When the time comes, I’ll make sure to share the process. It’s quite easy, yet extremely powerful and fun for the kids, too. It’s something that they can keep with them forever….and keep passing on.}

Music is revolutionary, always, in and of itself. Now I am more of a heavy bass and hard drum kind of girl. I like electronic goo mixed with organic messes of sound. But I am always conscious of the lyrical quality of songwriting. When someone is pouring their heart out for social change and cares so much about the world and it’s people, I am always touched. A friend of mine is helping promote this kickstater project for a friend and I thought I would help spread the word. We all need to help each other spread the goodness like liquid stars across our Earth Backyard……

As little as a dollar helps support the arts and world Love.

Summertime here is less about committing to anything, unless absolutely necessary, and more about not knowing and seeing where it all ends up. I have been existing and thriving in the in-between space, that place where we know we are changing, just about ready reveal the changed woman, but not quite yet. Not quite enough guts to go ahead and be born, release the new and really make it new, none of the old left except a book of gratitude for every moment that has brought me to here. This is a process of patience. I watch life breath and translate it like a foreign movie. I observe. And wait. I ask the sun to come out and burn faster. Just like my greens grow when they get solar love, I look up and Hope. And I am with them, those three. I look in their eyes and know they are my circle; those girls {and him, too}. My sacred ground, as always, and nothing even so new can change that. I have to have faith in that. There is no grass. There is no other side.

We wander the backyard not knowing what’s going to happen and end up being half naked and soaked with the hose. Or finding the chicks just about hatching from their thin little eggs. Some die. Some live. The rhythms of life is learned in such simple, natural ways. Or we just spend days with greasy chips and Rainier cherries on a tiny little beach against a shimmery lake and chase ducklings.

It’s been about movement. The other day I was thinking maybe there is something wrong with me. Maybe I’m not facing the fact that I should be sitting still. But I am repelled by that notion and keep moving, like a pathalogical need to keep on going, anywhere, everywhere, nowhere. Even when I sit still, I am humming, vibration happens and inspires. Nothing, not even a rock can be still. We all began with the word and the word was a sound and a sound moves and moves fast, low or high or mid-range, but it moves. My husband feeds me thick bread pizza and puts really earthy tasking sake in from of me and says, Sit. Relax. And I can’t seem to explain to him that everything right now is buzzing, swirling, moving. I can’t even find one photo of myself where there isn’t noise.

My kids teach me, as always to slow it. They are expert loungers. They like nothing more than to cut up a bunch of fruit and throw it in some ice water and take their blanket outside with a bag full of Archie comics and be there all day. Sula says to me, Read a big book, Mama. So I get one and I sit down with them for hours turning pages. I sink in the life of my novel, trapped in Joyce Carol Oates beautiful, morbid storytelling, chained and locked in literary prison, one that I happily stay shackled in. And when the urge to get up comes rushing over me like white water, we just go hammock to swing. Swinging is good. I am supported in stillness, yet moving, flying through the air below 2 apple trees and a murder of crows hoping we forgot to close the chicken coop doors.

This summer’s garden has to be the most pathetic one in a long time. We haven’t been around much to take care of it; although it’s loved and nurtured by my tribe while we’ve been nomadic, it still knows those who birthed it aren’t raising it. We got everything in late. And then the sun wasn’t present until July. JULY. Really crazy that we had our woodburning stove on as late as the end of July in the morning to warm up the house. This is something I will try hard not to complain about. Every type of weather I am learning to give thanks for. Weather alone is a gift. I want to tattoo that on me arm. 4 summers ago I was sweltering in the desert, unable to go outside without burning my feet on the sidewalk. So this summer, I remember, and I trust Nature’s ways. Echo loves to garden naked. I beg her not to sit down in the dirt with her bare bum. Worms, I tell her,worms. Please. Not worms.

We’re in Portland right now something to do with glass tiles and stone floors. But anyway. I love this mural in the Alberta Arts district. I love this energy. I love the idea of rising up and being ready to let go of everything I have been taught, to surrender to death so proudly and honestly and walk my Path, the one that seems risky. The one that seems hard and genourmous and totally overgrown with sharp things on vines. But to say hey, it’s mine. I’m here. Yes, here I am. Bring it on. Rise.

Also here in Ptown this lovely lady gave me a bit of love on my head, which was pretty wild and crazy. While her hands moved like hummingbirds we spoke of things near our hearts: voodoo, Catholic rituals and Stregheria. When she was done with me, my dreads were so tidy that I could have walked right into a business meeting without making everyone feel uncomfortable.

I lust after the city at night, I am so happy to be here this week. Way past our bedtimes, and the girls are taken care of my others, we fly across bridges and find hole-in-the-wall sushi with the best sake ever and cuts worthy of awards. And then across town even more where we get close and silly and dance. Bass. Skin. Low. Wide. High. Roll. Bend. Dagger. It’s all fun until another dude’s wife decides you and her are meant to be One. But that’s another story for another time.

Last month we were in Montana. That involved a lot of things. Wood. Bears. Black Wolves. Decks. Yoga. Blood. Sweat. Exhaustion. In the end we soaked here, because hot springs heal even the most tired traveler. They are like the earthen nectar, warmed like sulphuric elixir for the soul; a mountain tea infusion for the muscles. A mind pool where you can unleash and release and get all frizzy and wrinkly and drunk on thermal moonshine. Jerry Johnson Hotsprings. You really should go and tell me if you are and I’ll hop in the car and go back there in a flash. I swear I saw the Virgin Mary visit wearing fringed leather and a wolf head, bones necklace and holding a red candle. She smiled at me and told me everything is going to be just fine, that the world is perfect and stop treating it like it’s not.

I’ve been a little off on the blogging thing lately. I have been writing a lot, in other places than here and I am not sure what this is any more for me. But I know what I want it to be for you. I want whatever I say here to affirm something, I’m an advocate of one thing: whatever makes you Feel. Something. You know the something, I don’t. I’ve been skimming through lovely blogs lately and it seems these days people give advice, some kind of considerate poetry and manifestos on the how to’s for your world. Inspiration, I am assuming and most times, it truly is. But I want my inspiration to be real simple. I don’t want to be your cheerleader or self help guru, cause really I’m a fucking mess myself. You don’t need any advice and neither do I. You don’t need any wisdom from me on how to live or write, or sell or speak, or birth or parent or whatever. My inspiration is: do whatever you fucking want. Do what the fuck you want and what makes you Feel and do it with your heart leading you. I don’t know or care if your heart is wide open or slammed shut, doesn’t matter. Just stick your heart, the way it is, out there. Don’t be sold on someone else’s story. Just tell your own, or change it, or make it up completely. Just know you are doing it, and you are doing fine. You are your own Goddess.

We all are.

Once we get on the road for a while, it’s hard for us to stay off.

The land we are living on right now is ideal. Three acres just a spit across the county line; meaning a 5 minute drive down an amazing Chuckanut mountain road and we land smack in the middle of Bellingham. We live in the country in the city. The only drawback is that if you squint those ears ever so slightly you can hear the white water rapids of the 5 Freeway just up and away a bit. After a while it becomes silent, white noise to me, but really I appreciate it’s existence. For me it is a reminder there is the wide open road right there, ready for me when I say Go. And for nomadic hearts, this is a lovely thing.

We made a commitment to ourselves for this summer. To have fun. Last summer was operations and healing and struggle to rise up above the growing pains. This summer we don’t give a shit about anything but exploration, love, adventure, expansion. We want to throw it down and ride it out. So last weekend we hopped in the car again and headed East over the pass into Eastern Washington for the Conscious Culture Festival, a lovely family oriented gathering in the middle of mountains on the Barter Fair site. Mostly reggae music of course, but the ticket price included 2 whole days of yoga classes; kids and adult, massage, tarot reading classes, energy work classes, so much fun stuff (next summer YOU should come). But to be quite honest I didn’t care where we were going. I just wanted to go.

Washington State is such a diverse land, layered like an onion, revealing all these different systems and styles. As we cusped the pass of our snowy pine forests, the desert started to reveal herself, the temperature rose, and the sun got hotter. The girls and I noticed all the different flowers blooming and how they compared with our rain forest to the west.

And then she (actually I think these flowers are more like a He) jumped out at me. Rising up, reaching for the sun, standing it’s ground. Lupine. There was one. Then there was another. And then there were so many that we had to just stop. Usually when the flowers are asking to be our medicine that’s how it works. I don’t go looking for them. I just go….and if they want me, they will tell me. Lupine said, “let’s rock it” and so i did.

Flower essence is a subtle and powerful medicine all in one. It’s the essence, the energy of the flower just blooming. I feel like it’s The People’s Medicine. You need no skill to make these essences, except the skill to listen, love and respect. They are in abundance and they are here to guide us, to talk to us. They are not just for eye candy or the birds and the bees. They come here for reasons beyond our comprehension, but their essence does wonders on our subtle body, our mind and our soul.

I walked up a hill and waited until the right Lupine said, “yo”. I found him (him because, come on…..does it not look phallic? all cone and erect? That’s such a boy.”).

Carefully we took him from his earth home (some flower essence are made without taking the flower from the ground, but that’s not how I do it…..but it’s worth a try!). I had a large container of purified water in my van and a clean tiny ball jar. The girls and I removed the petals with prayers and thanks, of things we’d like to see infused in the essence and we placed them in the jar with the water. I put the open jar on the dash. I was making flower essence nomad style. We continued on.

Until we came to a series of waterfalls. These falls were rushing like mad against the pass road and the girls squealed to get out and play. It was al glacial fall, so the water was straight from the source. I sorta had to stop again.

Because how could I not have glacial mountain water in this essence?

I felt like I was stepping through the veil from this life into another, the insides of the water, being invited to surround myself from what springs from the Source. It was sublime and I got absolutely drenched and it well worth it.

The festival was a perfect spot to allow this essence to infuse, on a rock, in the sun with the vibrations of heavy, heavy bass, children laughing, people dancing and hooping and sharing food all around. So this Lupine essence is packed full of love, water……and a bit of this

and this

For me this essence is about letting go of my fears. It’s about stopping the bullshit in my mind and remembering that I am Uplifted. Already. I am Protected. Already. It;s about balancing my system and shifting what is off to on. I have been having bouts of fear regarding our fragile future on this planet. I’ll admit that living at the edge of the sea against the ring of fire freaks me out. I’ll admit that I worry about disaster and plague and food shortages. I’ll admit to panicking about the well-being of my children and about my ability to keep them safe. And I hate that I still carry fear about a future that is never guarenteed. I want to choose to let go of everything but This Moment. Open my heart to what is in front of me, needing me, loving me. And if the Big One from The Sea decides to dance 100 feet up in the air and splish and splash around me, well then so be it. I will be here to heal and love, serve and guide, I will be one of the many to help midwife us all into a more beautiful existence. For me, this is what this particular flower essence is all about.

(our local flower essence guru at Tree Frog Farm says this about Lupine Essence. She’s an amazing flower and tree essence cultivator whose has taught me a lot through her work).

We continue to plan adventures for the summer, road trips to hot springs and rocky mountains and herb fairs and urban goddess meet-ups for hair dreading and more music festivals because what a better way to spend a hot summer night than dancing in front of your tent with your kids? what a better what to connect with the earth but to listen to the medicine that it offers and accept the invitation to be part of this amazing web of healers….all of us. All of us.

Blessed.

It’s rawther a shame I have not written here in so long. Rawther. Eloise is the star in my house these days. If you don’t know her, you should. She says rawther and so do I.

Don’t ask me. I know nothing. Some days I think I might know what I want to cook for dinner but as the clock ticks, I find out I don’t. I don’t know what I have taken so long to come here. Busy. Yes. Writing. Yes. Cleaning. No. Refereeing three sisters in the boxing rink. Way too much.

We came back from our journey and I was rawther speechless for the most part. Humbled. Saturated with Sun and Love. It was a trip to travel back to the Roots. To go to the places I planted those roots, to the people who are tangled with me, growing down deeper and up higher together. It was a journey of patience and release. It wasn’t a vacation, it was a journey to what really matters to me, the people and the work I am doing. It was a journey to re-ignite co-creation, connect, and to dry our bones out. When we arrived home, it was to a home we had just moved into a day before we got on the road for 24 days. It’s been a bit of a transition for all of us. But we are home, whatever that means. And tonight instead of doing all the work I am suppose to be doing I am doing the work I really want to be doing. It’s been so long and so many photos to sort through. I’ll try my best at sharing.

In wine country we stayed with her. Do you know people who you trust so deeply that time and space don’t make a bit of difference in the relationship? Her home is a place where trust can run wild like a lion, looking searching for something more, unafraid to question, fearless to be seen. It’s a place where we can witness each other’s wine consumption and dive deep into the darker places, laugh at ourselves and know that even the laughter is holy. Even the waiting is sacred. Even the heart aches are proof of immense Joy.

Wild haired soul mates where able to jump and embrace. Sometimes I have to remember that even though I am in love with her….I think it’s really all about them. They will take care of each other for the rest of their lives. Somehow. Satchel will remind Mia to get it together. Mia will drag Satchel to the places that are questionable in safety. I’m not predicting lovers, no not at all, I am feel something bigger, a sister-brotherhood bond that I was never ever to give her.

We traveled south and stayed in the foothills of Los Angeles of my very, very dearest friend in the world. Now isn’t it funny I have no picture of her and I? Mothers of multiples running around feeding, cleaning, taking care of, entertaining, hiding over by the hot tub with the hopes of a little smoke between us. She is my morning star, my evening moon and my wildflower. She’s the real deal and has seen me evolve from a rotten 11 year old to the crazy adult I am today. She strokes my ego but also puts me in my place. We all need one friend who is willing to risk being nice to be honest with us. That’s her. Our daughters are sisters. They love and fight like they came from the same womb.

When I am in L.A. with her I feel like I truly am at Home.

While my man took the girls camping north of Malibu for a few days I got down to business in one of my most favorite places, full of magic, and skin and grim and drugs and art and fresh, fresh sea air. I spent 3 days with my creative partners in a dream, at a loft by the sea, invited by the Universe to do our work in the Shelter of someone who has already succeeded at the work we are trying to bring forth. It’s hard for me to write about all this as there is a bit of confidentiality and also a bit of feeling silly. Mostly I pinch myself as a stay at home mother in Washington State trying to relay this experience: raging creative fires and personal connections while the oceans crashed an arms length away, the bottle of whiskey was drained, avocados became uteruses, and the placenta was deconstructed in ways I have never thought possible. And we are closer to realizing this dream project into Reality. I keep pinching myself. Yes, I am awake. Shit, we all are. Notice it.

Magic and Passion live in Venice Beach.

Jump High.

Reminder: Life is Short. Murder the Demons and Rise Up

We got to spend time at one of our favorite places on Earth; Point Dume in Malibu. Here we found a Barn Owl, it’s life offered up freshly. It’s wings flapping in the wind on PCH. We pulled over to help it on it’s way; bury, prayer, tobacco. Still. Listening. Whenever owl comes into my life, I pay close attention. I am reminded to look around bit more closely. I don’t take this gift of finding for granted, I am well aware of what Owl is for me and I know that it’s asking me to enter the gate she guards, but first I have to really see it. With owl eyes.

I met my love here. 12 years ago I danced for him late at night while he watched my shadow move against the rock wall under moonlight and illegal campfire. Here I used to stretch large and pregnant with Mia, eating berries and drinking juices and rubbing her through my flesh with coconut oil. She grew in my womb with this part of the ocean singing her lullabies often. Dolphins visit. Seals molt. Sun blazes. Sand heals.

These are my alarm clocks, my morning zinger, my night time prayer, my traveling sisters, my singing companions, climbers of my mountain, acceptors of my nectar.

My ocean Pearl dances at the edge of her home, teasing the water closer to her, laughing at the sirens song, feeling the human in her skin but the water creature in her spirit.

The wild one calms down with the heat of the sand. A perfect place to listen and rest.

All I can say is that eating sand really doesn’t bother her in the least bit. And that her hair has never been the same since these beach days.

In the desert I was reminded. Of how quickly we can sink down roots, enough so that you always called back to Home, regardless of how the still, dry heat can drive your nerves mad or the endless pavement can place that perfect ache in your heart. In the desert I was reunited with the heavy and deep earth that will always hold my roots steady there. Desert Earth is unforgiving and once it holds you, it takes a machine to release. I am entangled there, never even realizing I could penetrate the ground, I still grow there, my heart somehow will always beat the strongest there. I became a mother there. I met my TRIBE there, the Ones who watched me grow big, and cry, and bring life forth and nurse endlessly and figure out how to mother, and came to my rescue with cookie dough and sat next to me while i pondered the ways I could escape that Hot Rock. The open air and the powerful souls that dwell in the desert dramatically and constantly change me; my mind, my heart, my hormones. I feel like when I step into the dusty field, plastic bottles strewn and cans smashed amongst grandmother plants, I am Free To Choose. In the vastness there is Nothing, and it invites me to create whatever and whenever and with whoever. Those years and the friendships I formed while I lived in sacred Arizona are engraved like hieroglyphics in my bones, scratched with a needle from a cactus into all layers of my skin. Ancient. Wordless. Formless. Ever growing. I bow in thanks. You know who you are.

All I can display is this. Because this light, this life says it all.

As we went back up, we couldn’t forget about soaking the hot springs. Here we washed off the city, the work, the business, the desert air, the remnants of our trip so we could head back into Cascadia. Nothing like a fresh hot spring in the late morning with a mug of tea, trillium blooming, and muddy, rocky spring bottoms exfoliating your bum.

I complained a lot about Washington on the trip. I was enamored by the Southern Californian sun and jealous of the ease and laze of life in the desert. I wanted to stomp in the city again. I wanted to nap on the sea’s sand. I wanted to be able to drive over to Leigh’s and lay around on her bed for hours and talk shit. I didn’t want to come home. Rainy. Wet. Gray. Blah. Poo. Muck. Wah.

As we got closer and closer I wanted less and less to be there. I was deeply yearning to go somewhere else. I had already been here. Where next?

But then when we pulled into the drive at 2am, our car loaded with everything from pails and buckets to hand me down books to rotten bananas and spilled sunscreen, I had an understanding. The owl guarded that door and invited me to enter. I finally saw the Door.

Moon bright. Stars cusping super nova spectrum. Air cold and bright, clean, tight against the chest. The presence of the giant cedar that shelters the house., the stream flowing, the wild animal roaming in the woods. I was in the Womb. If Los Angeles is an armpit. And Phoenix is an ass crack. Then where am I? I’m in the womb. Wait, no. Not the womb. I’m in the vagina. And seriously, is there anything better than a vagina to live in? It’s my place to travel, to be born. I live against the ring of fire and there is nothing to do here but shift, move, crown and Enter.

Giving thanks that I have a home. Many of them. And the my roots run wild, blessed paths cross, and many people to hold and love. What a lucky person I am to travel and be embraced wherever I roam.

Home is an illusion. As I sit here and type this in an old city in an old library, I am not further away from Home than anyone else. Home is an illusion. We can plan our granite counter tops and hang those pictures really straight. Use fabric and silk and lights and pot the plants we hope to keep alive. Our pantry can be full and organized. Our landscape matured. We can arrange their toys and have the perfect fucking bathtub. We can imagine it would just be better if our house was sitting somewhere else and not here. But it’s not. It’s not home. Whatever way you look at it.

At least for some of us. I know I don’t speak for everybody or anybody for that matter. But even I know that dream piece of piece of land and the cute little timber frame cabins with strawbale in it’s bones isn’t gonna be home (sure it would help, but still, it’s just another illusion). Home is somewhere you can’t reach, the key is lost in the endless cushion of the old couch. The key is just a moment, a sliver of time that if we look with open eyes we might get a glimpse.

I keep getting the feeling I want this trip to end and I want to go home and in that same moment I am shocked with lightening strength that I am whipping up a crockery of shit. I am not further away from my home right now that I am when I wake up in the bed that my kid peed in 5 moments earlier. So I better get used to it. Get used to feeling that there is no Home.

The Universe keeps inviting me to claim home. And my home isn’t a path. The path is home.

I sat there and pinched myself about 100 times. I turned to the right and there was the ocean, the grungy alley way that led to hot sand. There is nothing like looking at Venice Beach from above.

I sat at her desk and looked at her things and crossed out many of my words with her red pen. Who is she? I don’t know. I know her name. I’ve watched her creations. But I have never met her. But the Universe invited me, somehow, to sit there on the same chair her ass sat on while she typed up something that many people tuned in to. She had already done what I am doing now, she had already hit that Sweet Little Spot I keep pecking away for. I lit her candle. I used her notepad. I read her mantra as it leaned in front of me, golden framed: No Matter. Try. Fail Again. Fail Better. -Samuel Beckett. The Universe invited me to pick up that key and Be Home in a strangers loft, atop the sea. At her desk. Writing. Willing to fail. Again. Better.

I was told that fear of failure isn’t what stops most of us from walking our path Home. It’s fear of success.

I am scared to go home. When I am home, when I own those papers and carve my initials on the walkway, then who will I be? What will I do? What if everything looks different and to be honest being unhappy or just happy or ecstatic or totally miserable, or constantly searching within my scene is quite comforting, or familiar. Or what I am used to. I am not scared to fail. I am scared to be a rock star.

Will my kids still love me?

Will my husband?

Will I still love them?

Will I want fake boobs?

Will I forget about my roots?

Will i have to cut my dreads?

Will I have to follow templates?

Will I have to create my own?

Will I still be scared of Tsunami’s?

Will have to start making decisions instead of letting the world make them for me?

Will I still be able to lay around and do nothing and eat chocolate and turn of my phone and keep myself from the world?

Will guilt eat me away?

Will success seduce me in ways that puts tantra to shame?

Will i still be me? Which is currently a diluted version of the Source of the Seed of the Passion Creation Incarnation Contract that somehow I signed before I landed on this Earth (the one that said Fear of Failure does not excuse me).

I can see it clearly but the clarity if fogged by a bunch of What if’s and Will I’s and Will You’s. Mostly the fear of getting swept away with the waves that comes along with the monsters of success.

The Universe has been inviting me to see those monsters smiling at me, reaching a hand out. Even the most ghastly beasts have a heart of gold. And fantastic herbal danish body products made with blueberries and orchid doves.

Who am I turn Her down, She who hums all life to breath? Who am I to tell her I am too busy hiding under my rock or being comfortably stuck in the mud of my childlike desires? Who I am to be too scared to leave Homelessness? To show my children that I accept my Path TO Home.

Who am I?

One who accepts the invitation and wears something shockingly inappropriate, shoulders back, heart pulsed forward, open, open, open. Laughing at failure as it steps up to me at the bar and willing to dance with it over and over again, then getting it so falling down drunk on Scotch Whiskey and Lime, that I take pity on it, but don’t offer it a hand back up for the next song.

I accept.

In other news, the girls have been having a blast. Oceans, mountains, desert, museums, friends old and young, new and old. Soul brothers and injured birds, soul sisters and cat fights of buddha necklaces, feathers….a lot of feathers. Yoga teachers and mediations in canyons. Chocolate and best friends. Drive bys past the old houses, the places where they were born, their first parks, mama’s favorite cuban coffee, dada’s favorite burger, godfathers and new godmothers. And sand. SAND. and Dolphins. DOLPHINS. AND SUN. THE SUN. THE.SUN.

Our wet Pacific Northwest bones have been dried out. Our skin is peeling, like reptiles we all shed the winter layer, solar rays have burned through the Old, blistered and wept, peeled and exposed. Each one of us, from oldest to youngest have been re-born, perfectly, as birth does.

We live well on the road. We eat well. We run. We sing. We learn. We fight. We negotiate deals. We fly through the night from eco-system to eco-system while the girls sleep and Him and I hold hands and recall how the moment feels so different than before.

Actually. I take that back. Home isn’t an illusion. It’s a constant state. Our constant state is Home.

i have always been a self proclaimed gypsy. it’s my eastern european roots. my mediterean musical travelin’ blood. I am 2nd generation American and I have always felt the urge to migrate somewhere my whole life.

It’s a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts. I got ants in my pants. my feet burn. my legs jiggle and my heels rise up and down. i began to collect to much junk in my drawers. the view out my window begins to look not so interesting. i can memorize the marks on the walls. i can hum along to the drip of my faucet.

the season roll around and boxes are in my living room and the girls can’t help but to open them up and dig through the contents when I’m not looking. I have snuck out so many bags of their time-to-pass-on stuff to goodwill and i alone have purged 80% of my wardrobe. It feels good to be lighter. But it feels hard to wander again. it’s only 4 minutes away from where we are now, but still. as mia says, “i’ll miss this old house. i’ll sure miss this old house”.

it’s not really our doing. our landlady went a bit batty right about the time we were contemplating the high price of our rent. we felt it all was a sign to uplift and re-root. we found a place on 3 acres. a salmon stream running through it. a fairy forest behind it. a waterfall. abundance of all things medicine right out the back door. we found it, it needs a good remodel and when it’s all done and beautiful it will be passed on to my in-laws; the gift of space from my husband to his parents. so once again, not a permanent place for us. this is bittersweet. completely bittersweet.

i am beginning to wonder what the universe means. are we meant to fully come to understand that the only home there is is nowhere but where you are? i hear the buzzing of my own mother in my ears that lectures me about kids needing to settle down and stay in one place. and i honor that. when i try and reason with myself i keep making the excuse that it’s been circumstance that has kept us flowing like a river and not settled like a rock in the mud. but that is a crock of bullshit. not circumstance. choice. my choice. our choice.

and i am now digging deep for roots. i’ve taken on badger medicine, they dig down so deep and know what grows underground. there home is nestled agains the roots of the earth. my medicine is the roots of living things, taking it back to the beginning, the simplest form of uprising and down-moving. being roots doesn’t mean staying still, it means finding comfort in the earth while we get Deeper and we Elevate. Growth is the goal.

this month i have honored this by creating many root tonics. ginger root, burdock root, licorice root, licorice fern root, astragalus root. i have cleaned off earth, held the knotty, gnarly, twisted and turny vessels of life in my hands, the portals of nutrients and minerals that bring laughter and life up through the earth. i have watched them, talked to them and tried to bring myself inside them, remember who i am and where i came from, where i will be and how i can pull up prana in every moment so we all grow. I am mama roots, and i bring comfort and heath to them all.

this is one of the harder things i have had to do. make the decision that home is a place that i must find….regardless if the hop skipping around is the movement in my life. to walk the fine line of knowing my roots and also deeply feeling that my roots don’t mean that i might have to commit to work on finding a place and staying in it forever. it just means that it’s time to fully commit to this life. there is nothing left to walk away from. there is only this breath to stay in, these toes to press into earth, these legs to feel sturdy like the cedar trunk, these branches to flex and dance with the direction of the wind.

[until our next home is ready, i.e. legally and officially closed with the bank, we will be on the road spreading some love straight down the coast and then over to the vast desert space. i am excited to write as i travel, my big camera will be repaired and long stretches in the car always inspire the words to jump forwards. i felt alive storytelling this journey…….so excited to share the experiences of travel again.}

licorice root fern finds home in the side of trees. it’s roots are amazing for respiratory health. the tea tastes a tad bit like licorice.