I’ve been initiated by fire.  Here is how I spent Thursday evening:

This is something I’ve been wanting to for at least a decade.  Interesting, I have never really practiced, here and there, half-assed with practice poi.  But the opportunity arose, and my teacher was hesitant (one should really practice intensely before lighting up) but we were in a I don’t give a shit sort of mind which is perfect when you dance with fire. 

Sexy.  Powerful.  Fierce.  A fire troop of magnificant women are taking over the world.  Wanna join?

My muse has returned.

(the youtube screen of our video doesn’t seem to be showing up.  click here if it you can’t see it either._

Rewind Selectah! Don’t stop till the very last drop!

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And yes, she is learning to scratch. Her father cringes every time she puts her finger down on a limited edition vinyl and takes it for a little push and pull. 

One of the two turntables is missing a slipmat (the one she is placing a Dancehall compilations called Punany.  Um, yeah, she says that’s her  ‘very best’ record.  Anyway, I told her she couldn’t use the turntable without the slipmat.  She climbs down from her DJ booth after thinking for a moment.  She heads over to the sacred paper towel cupboard, pulls and rips two towels off the roll.  Climbs back to her booth and figures out how to get the papertowels on to the turntables in place of a slipmat.  "is this good?" she asks.  "yeah it’s good" i smile at her.  "perfect".  The dance party begins.

B and I debated whether or not to put his gear out in the open at this house.  We had a designated studio space in AZ.  My feeling has always been, a child learns by watching (which she has done since she was 2 weeks old). And then a child learns by doing.  "easy for you to say" he says to me.  "it’s all my gear not yours."  "Many a time I have let her write love stories to Cody Maverick (Surf’s Up) on my laptop, " I remind him.  "Yeah, and she’s busted two computers," he reminds me. 

But in the end he decided put it all out, whether it be for Mia to learn the trade, or because his cold ass is sick of making music out in the garage, it seems to be working out. 

Mia’s Old Skool Mixed Tapes available upon request.

(This is not a post for judgment. If thought of eating the placenta for medicinal reasons makes you sick, just pass by this post please).

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It started with the lentil soup.  I looked into the bowl, the light orange swirls of legumes had bits and flecks of ham and mushroom and smoky black beans, and it was sprinkled with just enough salt and pepper.  Truly a fine post partum soup for me and my princess, made with love by a friend.  It was brought to me in thick hand-made bowl, swirls of blues and green and blacks and shaped like a small cauldron, a potter working out of a barn in Connecticut had crafted it just for me a few years back.  I just stared at it, the bowl and the colors and the smells, the hyper-focus of my mind and my eyes sent me swimming somewhere else, far, far from my light flecked bedroom, walls the color of buttercream and soft silky fabric thrown over the window started closing in, eerie and almost Lynchian. The tears welled and I pushed the bowl away, looking up at the barer, staring into his eyes, they looked down at me in offering: I bring nourishment.  But I felt nothing.  Not an ounce of thanks or grace or contentment.  Not anger or sadness.  Just  blankness, emptied like a vessel that was once full to the brim with anticipation and joy, of grateful waiting. The nothingness was pulled thick like suffocating wooliness over my body, then my throat and finally my head. Emptiness had become the heaviest, scratchiest of weights. And I began to sob.

I don’t want it.  Just take it away.  I push his hand hard and creamy lentils plopped over the edge of the bowl and onto the wood floor, a small bit splash onto the white down that kept me and Z warm. I rubbed it in with my finger and sob. Fuck.

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I read this post the other day, remembering a few other people who have done the same thing and each story I hear about it makes me both wonderfully warm and sad.  Sad because this is a question, that we need to be challenged to hug one another.  Would we hug someone just for a hug’s sake?  For love’s sake, even if that person was a stranger? With a sign?  Or not.

Damn right I would, was my immediate response.  Hell yeah, I’m Sicilian. We’d hug the UPS man if he didn’t run so quickly back to his truck after leaving the box at my door.  I hug the lady who works at the local grocery store who manages the kid toy section almost every time I see her, because she lets me, I sense her openness and she is just amazing and I adore her. And at the other market, the Co-Op, I hugged the man who sweetly swept and mopped the massive canning jar that was almost full of molasses (it was taking forever to fill; slower than molasses in January? They weren’t kidding. The jar was covered in the goo, as were my hands).  Somehow it slipped, I tried to catch it with my prodtruding belly, but alas, it dropped.  Crashed and splattered.  I just stood there and watched him clean it, the whole time apologizing for my sheer klutziness, blaming it on the pregnancy.  He smiled the whole time and assured me it was nothing.  When he was done, I smooshed into him with my huge belly, arms around his arms.  Thank you, I said to him.  Thank you for not making me feel bad.  I break everything these days.

There is nothing I love better than to embrace my friends, heart to heart, passing back and forth that much needed vital force of energy called Love.  And I have no problem embracing the stranger, too, especially if they have done something nice for me.

And today, my self-confidence in hugging anyone would be tested.

I walked into my local coffee place.  Grabbed a muffin and a chai.  As I was walking to a table, there was a middle aged-woman smiling at me, beaming from ear to ear.  She was sitting at a counter on a stool.  As I got closer her face lit up even more and it was easy to see she had severe Down’s Syndrome.  She was drooling and her smell was intense. Her eyes were imprinting my soul.  She stared me up and down.   I love you. She said to me stopping me in my tracks.  I planned to keep walking by her towards a table in the back.  Can I hug you? My first reaction, to my surprise was not of openness, but a body and sensory shut down for the quickest moment.  I retreated into my turtle shell,  protection mode for body and spirit. What do I do? Hug? Walk?  I breath. And immediately my body released. I put my cup and plate down on the counter.  I needed no protection.  I wrapped my arms around her scratchy wool sweater that quite honestly reeked of urine and gave her a big hug. Her arms were strong and her energy so vibrant I could feel it pulse right through to my heart.  She patted my belly. She looked me in the eyes. I love you.  I love you, She said to me again with a big, wide child-like smile. The woman she was sitting with, who was most likely her care-provider glanced at me and gave me a wink and then went back to reading her paper.

We love you too, I said, We love you, too.  She went back to eating her cookie.  I picked up my things and walked to a vacant table.  I sunk into my seat.  Saying the “we” before the “love you too” was so instinctual.  It was like I knew she saw me as me and the baby.  That would make a “we”.

I immediately thought of J’s link to the hugger.  After initial hesitation, I had to check myself and my self-proclaimed status as being open to affection from the greater world I am part of.  Sure, I’m a hugger, when I find you to be safe and relatively familiar and when I decide it’s you I want to hug.  But for the random stranger, who looks different, smells different, sounds different; who approaches me with open arms,  I had to think twice before extending my physical love.  Of course, I fell into the act within moments of the request, but it wasn’t my gut reaction to embrace. Once I did, I knew it was more than right; this pure and sweet woman who sensed my readiness to have a baby, probably knew I needed some love. 

And then I realized, it certainly wasn’t me who needed to extend my love to her.  It was her who gifted me with her unconscious desire to open up to the powerful force of love and touch.  It seemed primal and immediate to her.  She didn’t think about it, she felt it and she acted upon it without a thought.  With me, I had to stop, think, and then surrender that part of me, the part that should just know to love.

Back to understanding that I have a lot of work to do.  That I know nothing.  I believe nothing. Absolutely nothing.  But that’s okay.  It just means I constantly learn.

Here is a movie review for The Business of Being Born.  I respect her choice to give it a rather negative review, dismissing it as important for our current birth culture.  Although I don’t agree with her that documentaries should be unbiased and objective.  I mean, they are called documentaries to document experience.  Nobody said it’s “the news” (ha! Like the news is even close to being objective).  And I hardly felt that Lake’s movie suggested that homebirth is the right choice for everyone.  She just gave homebirth a voice that it craves.   I personally do find that Lake’s film may in some ways feed the Fear Factor a bit for women who may have never even thought of the world of birthing in this way.  I think dramatic plays on the horrors of what happens in hospitals, whether coming from a Baby Story episode or Lake’s documentary is not the way to inform women on birthing choices, which Stevens (the critic) makes note of.

But to call Michel Odent a crackpot?  Hold me back…I’m swingin’ at her for that one.

I really try to keep my birth talk, my birth writing personal.  I/We (my family) personally chooses homebirth.  I do so because this is what my body tells me is right and good and safe for us.  Before I even got pregnant, I was given a glimpse through my immediate community what it was like to birth in both homes and hospitals. I could compare stories, read up on the subject, talked to care providers..etc.   I was a lucky one, for some reason I stumbled upon enough information and evidence based education. I also fostered a deep intuition that birthing would need to be private and holistic for me in order for it to be safe and empowering. My decision came easily, and immediately I fell into a supportive system. 

I do not think that homebirth is the right choice for everyone.  It’s absolutely not.  Nothing is an absolute in life.  Everyone walks different paths. Breastfeeding is not right for everyone. Co-Sleeping is not the answer for all.  Clothe? Disposable? Who knows except you? Nobody.  There are a  million other choices one could make in parenting and there are no rules, we need to find our own path.  To think one way or another is ‘better’ is just ignorant.  And propagandist.  For myself, homebirth is beyond words a way for me to bring peace on this earth, because it brings peace to myself and my little circle of family.  I like that quote by Gandhi that so many people share: Be the change you wish to see in the world.  Not once in there does he say preach the change.  Being the change means exactly that.  I homebirth because I want to see the change happen: in myself. I do not expect others to make the same choices as I do.

But sharing information is not preaching.  Women deserve to be handed a wide variety of literature and support.  We need to ask ourselves: Do all women understand the slippery slope of medical interventive births?  Do all women know that homebirthing without drugs is intense, wild and sometimes ends up in needed transfers and sometimes non-vaginal birth? Do all women understand exactly what epidurals do to the fetus?  Do all women know that OB’s must take, on average, 30 clients a month to pay their malpractice insurance and perhaps the rate of inductions and scheduling is not in the best interest of the mother and baby, but a simple necessity of the doctor (30 births a month is impossible to attend if mother is left to birth on her own).  Do all women know that the hospitals would not survive without the ‘interventive’ birthing industry (including anesthetic and surgeries and pharmaceutical outfits..etc).  Do all women understand the birth is not a guarantee?  Women and babies do die, as in life? Do they understand that no matter where one births, there is risk?  Do they know that moving in birth and positions other than laying down can help babies come out?  Do they understand that sometimes drugs can help a women birth her baby more safely than not? Are they prepared to accept that birth might not be what they thought it was going to be?  Each woman who prepares to birth needs to hear it all. Informed choices equal power.

 There will always be a divide between birthing practices. We argue the esoterics and ethics and medical reasons for either or.  But until we all are offered an array of information, we are marginalized and fall prey to propaganda.  On either side.

What a women needs is love and support.  Offerings of gentle information and people to hold her space safe; to allow her to experience the vastness of pregnancy and birth, whether she feels safe in the comfort of a doctor, or a midwife, or on her own.  Each woman needs the respect to make decisions based on her body wisdom.  All women need to be encouraged that they are indeed FULL of body wisdom, and their babies share in that space.  Women need to be held and encouraged to listen to themselves.  When a woman listens to herself and her baby, makes choices for herself and her baby, regardless of what they are,  she deserves respect in her community, from her care providers, from her culture.  There is a saying…mother knows best.  It starts when the baby is in the womb.

I get annoyed when people try to passively and aggressively tell me it’s dangerous to have my baby in my home, just as I get annoyed when people claim that homebirthing is best and safest choice. I just listened to my body wisdom, my subtle whispering soul, the one that wants me to grow and expand.  That voice, for me, led me to stay at home.  If my body whispered to me that another place, such as a hospital, was where I needed to be, then that is where I would be.  And on top of listening to myself, I was blessed: I knew I had choices.  I know I could be at home and I knew it was safe for me to do so. 

I didn’t personally think The Business of Being Born was the greatest documentary in the world.  but for goodness sake’s she is trying, she is trying to get the word out there so women understand they have choices, all kinds of choices.  There are doctors and hospitals on every corner, filling up chunks of the Yellow Pages. We know we can go there and they are so easy to find, but do all of us know what we might encounter when we birth there?  And in some places finding a midwife to attend your birth at home can be hard to find, and once we do, do we know what it could be like to labor for 3 days at home with no drugs? Are we ready for that? All of us may not know that homebirth IS safe, and so Ricki Lake shares information that allows us to understand that is indeed is.  It is safe.  The rest of our culture is quite sure the other alternatives are better.  Let a little homebirth voice be heard. 

And again Odent is NOT a crackpot.  It is a shame she put that down as words.  He really is a gift.  But that’s just my little opinion.  His waterbirth work probably was a reason I was able to have one.  And to birth without water for me is like living without air.

(Okay, I am going back to being a mushy headed, emotional pregnant woman, soaking in her birth tub, drinking Lime Seltzer Water and reading silly magazines.)

The sun rose at 8am today.  It seemed to sink sometime around 4pm.  The moon was out by 1pm this afternoon.

These have been dark days.

And for the first time in a long time, it is truly dark for me, literally; the light is gone.  We wake in the dark and walk to get the afternoon mail delivery in the dark.  For the past 11 years I have lived under a spotlight, between California and Arizona, the winter sun is strong and you have to really pay attention to see the shortening of the day.  And now I live at a different latitude where I have been swallowed by a force impossible to ignore; the sun wanes.  It goes away.  Nothing else to it. Life revolves around it’s absent..  People retreat inside early not fighting the darkness instead they lie against it.   There is a mystery surrounding people’s homes as we take an evening walk in wild wind.  I sense my neighbors all sit around their fire and unconsciously wonder, like the ancients did as the days got darker and darker:  Will there be light? And there was. 

This is my favorite time of year.  Not because my energy is at a peak or because I get things done or because I love the cold or because it makes me feel good and alive.  Quite the contrary.  This time of year I go so deep, so inside, like a crab I crawl and withdrawl inside my shell and wait; protected and hermit-like. I die a bit, happy to get rid of some things that I don’t need. I sleep in hope of something else, not expecting or anticipation, just knowing. The possibility of light, I suppose, whatever that word ‘light’ means.  Not good or better, just different. My insides create a new path for the next cycle during this hibernation, the light on the other side just helps me walk it; a little more clearly and out in the open. This is what I like about it all.  Knowing that even though I can’t see shit right now, soon things will be revealed, things that have always been there I’ll be able to see a bit more clearly. This year there is child within this dark mystery, and with the return of some daylight hours, my baby comes closer to reality.  There is nothing symbolic about the Solstice and birth of newness this year.  I live it tangibly.

Growing up Catholic, our life was infused with ritual; frankincense and myrrh resin burning in golden vessels, holy water held in bowls throughout the house.  We chanted mantra to Mary, fingering beads until we completed each mystery. The Mother held center in the faith, through Her we could ask for grace.  We had prayers for an array of saints, all representing a variety of needs from hopeless causes to lost keys.  We had little altars set up everywhere.  We never, ever owned a Bible.  In essence, I was being schooled in paganism. As every good Catholic should know: their religion was cleverly modeled after the pagans and indigenous cultures they sought to reform. 

At an early age, the face of my god could be found in a knot of a tree or in the quick shift of a weather system.  I found salvation watching the dandelions turn from yellow flower to puffy seeds. My childhood was totally inconsistent inside my house, things changed on a daily basis with no meaning to me.  I never knew if I should be scared or happy or if I was bad or good, no boundaries where ever defined and depending on the moods of my parents, nothing was ever the same, no rules or schedules were ever implemented to feel safe and real. But I found my own sense of peace through ritual and system; I watch the weather change with my nose pressed up against my window.  I sniffed for the fallen leaves and the chimney smoke in the air.  I waited for the ice to melt into water and drip its ping-ping from the storm drain onto my awning.  I knew it was time to run wild in the sun and get color in my cheeks and on my nose at the first scent of grilled meat and sweet wild strawberries wafting through the neighborhood.  These seasons, these shifts, are what gave me license to truly live, to grow.  To feel safe and to feel protection, what lacked in my home, I got from the Earth..

Because my birthday just so happened to land on the Winter Solstice, we always celebrated that day.  It was festive. It came natural to us, being bound by winter and the unconscious desire to bring in the newness were good reasons to party.  My parents would hold their yearly bash for their youngest girl combined with a huge Christmas party.  This day the fire was lit strong, wine bottles were emptied, shot glasses of Sambuca were clinked with the chorus of Salute! My mother’s biscotti was arranged in pretty little dishes all over the house and the cherries jubilee was aflame.  There was drunken singing and ladies in funky seventies faux furs dancing in my living room.   It was a party of all parties and I loved every minute of it.  And because my mother always said to me, On the darkest day of the year, a light was born: You. I got the deeper meaning of the day.

And so despite my Catholic upbringing, I was well aware of what happened on the Solstice.  And it was hard not to see the parallel from a very early age: The birth of The Son (Jesus) just so happened at about the same time as The Birth of The Sun.  In the middle dark, the virgin midwinter Sun appeared and gave us hope; for food, for warmth, for days filled with light to guide.

And so I celebrate the Sun.  I gave thanks.  And as I  get older and less judgmental and less righteous about my beliefs, I see no difference in a Son being born, or the Sun being born.  I give thanks to both.  They both deserve celebration and reverence; lighting a fire, doing a little dance, getting a little drunk, committing to love and warmth, sitting in meditation or prayer, taking a walk in the night womb right before The Great Labor begins.  I will savor these moments; the last ones where I can really hide inside, curl up in the coziest (yet sometimes uncomfortable) internal ball and catch a few more moments of deep sleep and learn just a bit more about myself, embracing the ugly and the beautiful of my inner winter, my raging storm, my dark sky. And then I am invited to open up wide and catch a glimpse of what is to come, I can see it a little better with the sun on the edge of the world, that heat burning a bit flame into my sacred heart.  But tonight, on the eve of the Solstice,  I will stir that soup in wool socks and sweats one more time and put myself to bed right after I am done eating it.  I will sit in this space and not bother to turn on more lights to keep the day going a bit longer.  It is over soon.  Tomorrow is a new day.  The darkest day, but also the portal to an expanding light.

Here’s to what’s been so very dark.  And to the precious gift of tomorrow, heres to The Sun; a light savior, indeed.

The road was winding down out of the pine thick green forest, into the lighter juniper brush and finally hitting the land covered with our Desert Guardian, The Saguaros. The sky was so blue, electric-bright and the sun seemed to be relentless. The temperature said 115 and for the third time in 2 months, my air conditioning in my beloved Outback just went out. I began to have a panic attack. A real one. My heart jumped to my throat. Its pounding raced like there was a finish line for it somewhere. My palms sweat like a faucet. My breathing was shallow. All I could do was make a strange humming noise and flutter my hands by my face. My husband glanced at me while he drove, and I think that at that moment he realized how insane I was. I started to whimper.

“I know, wifey, it’s hot. We’ll be home soon.”

No. Not hot. Not that at all.

WHAT IF THE HOUSE DOESN’T SELL? I think I screamed it.

Here my deepest, darkest, scariest fear lives and it lives with me every moment. The possibility that it just. wouldn’t. sell. In time. In time for what? I guess in time for me to get up to Washington before this baby came swirling out of me. In time to find someone, like a midwife, to guide us with this birth. In time to find a place to live other than a pop-up. In time to take a leisurely vacation up the coast with my little family. In some kind of time.

“I’ve been scared of that, too, wifey,” says He. “But while you all slept last night and I sat outside the tent and watched the stars shoot and got to hear nothing, absolutely nothing for the first time in a long time, I realized I had to detach myself from it all, especially any time frame. The house will sell. But we need let go of the desperation that it must sell now. I hope it will, I think it will, but if it doesn’t, we’ll deal with it. I think in the detachment we’ll find some freedom. It’ll help us de-stress a bit.”

Okay Mr. Zen-y-pants. Fine. Don’t you just know it all? But I want to get the FUCK outta here NOW. NOW!! I cannot have another child here. FUUUUCK.

“I can’t have this kid here.”

“I know you don’t want to, but if we have to, we have to. But I am sure we won’t have to.”

“No, if we have to I will have this baby along side the Scenic Highway they call The 1.” I quickly remember a mystic I went to see back in 2000. Her name was Maya and her cards told me that I would have a baby on the road someday. (This thought quickly brings me to the fact that we probably should invest a bit bigger vehicle.)

He starts to talk again about how all our stress is because we are putting this strict timeline on ourselves. That we just need to let it all be and let this action, this shift happen on its own because we have done the work for it.  I plug my ears and hum some more. He sighs.

This I don’t want to hear. This means I have to let go of myself, my desires, my needs. My expectations of my future. This means I have to just take what comes to me, prepared to allow its own happening, like a river, around the rocks, knowing I am going somewhere, emptying myself out in more water, but the path is not written, or rigid. It just is and I flow with it.  Shit. All this work; ripping up floors and tearing up warped butcher block, and installing stone and making wholes in the ceiling for fancy lights and painting walls and living with nothing except empty space; this vision board I carefully crafted with times and dates and numbers and photos of rocky coastline and kids playing with chickens; the talks with the realtor in Washington; the dreams of being all cozy and pregnant in warm wool wraps, for the first time not carrying to term in triple degree temperatures, instead birthing with a light snow falling, a fireplace lit, a foggy, marine layer, a winter morning when my child comes to me. Wool socks on. Frost on a window. Broth on the stove.

All this, all this wanting, longing, and still i must become detached.

The wise let go of the self and being free of attachment they depend not on knowledge. Nor do they dispute opinions or fix upon any view. For those who have no wishes for either extreme of becoming, here or in another existence, there is no conflict….
From Sutta-Nipata, teachings of the Buddha.