Lila: letting out my wild woman

Last weekend storms came, violent and mystical, like omens or oracle. Friday, a week ago, the sky turned eerie gray and weighted and the air blew crazy. And then rain pounded and lashed, and then hail clattered and pinged, and watching the trees whip and whirl was a terrifying beauty. The sky was the color of late night, dark and damp, and it was one in the afternoon. And it sent so many branches and even whole trees splintering and cracking and clashing to the ground. Light posts crashed over and sparks flew. Power went out. Car alarms wailed. It was spine-chilling and breathtaking.

The storm left pools of water everywhere, in the streets and basements, and our car which had the window left down. And now they fill the air with so much moisture you can feel its weight when walking, smelling of rot and dark magic and mosquitoes thrive and feed off us, skin covered in red welts. Two nights ago, I was kept awake by the wails and screeching scream of a cat in heat. It is a violent sound of desire, a splitting open sound, a bloody sound. Like a scream. Like ecstasy. Like need. Like terror. Like all of it coming together. And I imagined her coming into my home and walking over my bed, her paws covered in blood, leaving footprints of her knowing on my sheets.

It is this dark side of summer's sun that has always lured me to her. Yes, I love the ease of summer months, the lazy mood and carefree sounds of kids playing, and the splashing in the pool and the slurp of snow cones. But it its this dark fecundity that lures me every time. This sweltering and primal kind of humid heat. It is thick like jungle. And rotting wetness like swamp. And insects multiply and swoop inside the moment the window is lifted, the door cracked open. And fruit left sitting out on the kitchen counter turns into soft ripeness and smells sticky sweet. And I sit here, listening to this song. I sit here, feeling sweat pool on the inside of elbows and knees. I sit here, feel my primal side take over, my own instinct nature thrive.

Since submitting my last packet for school (woo-hoo) it feels like everything that was planted there, came to grow there, but was held inside in some way so as to keep up with deadlines and keeping my shit together, now it spills out. There have been a lot of tears. The best kind, with no words or meaning, no I'm crying because I'm angry or crying because I'm sad, but just crying because my body wants to cry, to release, and tears can do that for me. And then I fall asleep. I have slept so much this past week, hard deep sleep. Sleeping eight to ten hours a night and when I wake I cannot quickly remove the veil between sleeping and waking worlds. My dreams are violent and lush, scary and filled with so many colors and I cannot shake their vivid aliveness. My dreams come like cobwebs and when I wake they cling to the inside of my eyelids. When I wake my body feels so heavy, unable to disentangle from the mattress, my limbs buried inside its weight. When I wake my eyes are puffy, swollen, the remnants of hard sleep, deep sleep, entering into other worlds sleep.

I've been filled with this intense feeling of being present, here. Like I spend so much time knocking on the door to life, waiting for it to open. And then that moment comes and I see myself, standing there on the inside, and my hands have always been the one holding the keys. Summer does this to me, this coming back home to myself and just being here, in my life, living. The taste of bitter chocolate and the feel of sticky tree sap on the hands. The smell of cinnamon and the sounds of sex. The creativity pulsing in earth's veins and her night terrors of neglect, the community gardens and abandoned housing projects, the hard won celebrations and the sting of surprise, the web of all these people, each of us here, living, hoping to connect. The feeling of grief so strong I think I will die, I swear I will die, and somehow, feeling it all, it brings me again, always again, to the living. Writing words for me alone, the feel of silky lingerie against my skin, the juice from the pineapple that spills onto the counter, taking a walk with a friend, seeing George streak naked through the apartment after taking a bath and how he inhabits his body and being without inhibitions, the moments when I remember to forget who I think Elliott is and see him there again as complete wonder and mystery, the heart thud when expectations go unmet, the ecstasy of knowing what it is to love and be loved.

The papers done, the body rested, the tears cried, the storm sweeping through and now passed, my wildness emerges. She comes out with a sloppy smile and eyes swollen with sleep dreams. She screams out like the cat in heat, licking Elliott's shoulder and biting his arm. She slinks out with the dancing at home, alone in my apartment. She crawls out with fire in her eyes and mischief in her mouth. She spills out with pleasure and knowing: the sensitivity of skin being touched awake, the heart all pulpy and raw with being opened, the aggression of animal instinct, the fierce tenderness of being in the space where roots descend down deep and all these green things grow.

THIS is, Noa, ...

...your life! You've got it! The good, the bad...the ugly...the sexual, the fear, the trepidation, the satisfaction....the love, the connection....THIS is all your life.

Some brilliant woman said to me once: who told you it would get better than this? (These were the words relative to my situation.) And over the years as I replay that moment I continue to get: who said there would be more up than down days? who said "we" deserve "better"...by the way - who defines better?....who said bad things don't happen to good people? Who ... WHO said all that? WE did. We made the prediction that life would be "more".

And, honey, I get you...I get it..I really do. There must be more to this and I think we both know that in the states of bliss that come along it's quite obvious that there is more...and you know what? You are one of the gifted few that have already touched the Divine...have already slipped your tongue into the vase (pronounced: vahz) of Bliss...not many do; they just don't. But because you have it's hard to exist, sometimes, as "just" a worldly being.

We all get it, we Sirens, Ms Noa...and we are here to be on the other side cheering you on...and you know what?...sometimes you are on the other side cheering us on...because it's a never ending journey - this place to bliss and back....and then as the book says: there's the laundry!

You are a Seeker, my friend....love the seeking...it's fucking hard work and your people should be blessing their existences that they get to partake in your manifesting what this life holds for all of you! Rock it out on your time..I assume you're already returning at this point. I hope it was exactly what it needed to be...knowing sometimes that what we need doesn't look at all like what we want...and you know that already, you brilliant, lovely, curly, running, chugging, mothering, loving, sexing, hot WOMAN!

YOuRs...
Zita

Flying the friendly skies...

I'm sitting in the Boston airport. Got here three hours ago, after hitching a ride from Vermont. The week was madness. The last time I traveled alone was September, flying to Seattle to meet you all. This time, I'm with my oldest sister. Tomorrow I go to an all-day retreat and then we're driving to Ocean Beach for three nights. She's paying for the flights with miles, the rental car, the condo.

I am so tired. Like really, extremely, self-indulgently tired. Like crash-and-burn-in-the-afternoon tired. Dragging ass, barely able to keep going tired. I was a crazy lady this week, a madwoman, a goddess with twelve arms and three heads thinking of every possible thing I could do to ease and smooth the transition of my leaving for a week, the longest I'll have been away from Wren.

I wonder about this cycle, the hyper-ultra-organized-productive-think-of-everything part, countered by the fatigue, the depletion, the deficit I think I must always be running on. Or running away from? I had my period all week, and actually I welcome the reason it offers me to declare separation. Red doesn't ask, I don't offer, and there are these few days where we don't do the little dance of are-we-going-to-have-sex tonight. The best part of this was last night, I was so at choice about it, so wanting him, declaring my readiness, not the least be resistant or despondent, no rallying required. I was just ready, no holds barred. At 8pm I told him you're coming upstairs with me, the girls are camped out with snacks and chocolate chips in front of a movie, they will be happy and honestly I don't think this is going to last all that long. So we went up and by the time he got in the room I was naked, joking that he is such a good sport. It was so fast and so electric and good, I thought why can't it, why isn't it always like this? But more than that, I loved feeling him get all sweaty and the freedom I felt and the abandon of claiming our time, not waiting diligently till later when I am too damn tired.

So as for all that exhaustion I stated earlier, feeling so attached to it, dramatic about it... that disappeared last night for about 15 minutes.

Makes me wonder what else would make it disappear. What else could I do more or less of to be more energetic??? I'm curious about the ayurveda stuff I know Foxy and who else among you knows about.

Reading your posts lately, I have this sneaking suspicion there's more roiling and rolling beneath the surface than I have been able to name lately. I am racing along. I still worry too much, in general, worry about being and doing enough, what would it look like to let down more, who would I be and on the other hand, it all comes down to so much self-judgment that I just want to let my face go slack, to cry, to be still, to be enough exactly as I am in this moment.

I am in the airport! With my sister! And my bag with two books to read! Where are my babies! It is hard to leave, and then there is that part of me that knows that after tomorrow, I may want to change it all up, throw all these beautiful tiles and stones and gems and jewels above my head, let them land, invite everyone around me to gather them up, claim one or many. I look around at this scene, with me in it, the laptops and cell phones and blackberries and plastic cups and loudspeakers, and have this thought that everyone here will die. I don't mean it in a morbid sense or a dire sense, but more with awareness that this is it, this fleeting life. It makes me love my girls and Red so much.

It is only when I begin thinking that I worry. Anxiety kicks in. There must be something I am missing, something I should be doing, thinking, creating, imagining, being. But what if there isn't? What if this is it, this is my actual, real life, my actual self here, missing nothing? Do I belong? What is this life?

If it is now, then I have nothing to fear. Nothing at all. Ariel & Wren are home with their Dada. I am taking care of myself by going away. The bills, somehow, by hook and by crook, are paid for this month. Who knows about next, or the ones after that and the ones after that - that is a rabbit hole, and I do not want to go there. The only thing there for me is hyperventilation, and I hyperventilated my way through my week, and I have to keep insisting for myself on another way.

Can you help me?

I love you. When do we gather round?

Lila: restless and ready

Monday I turn in my last writing for the semester. I am ready. So, so ready. Because I have loved this work. I do love this work. But I need some time off, away. To tend to the restlessness inside me, this volcano inside me heat building as I have locked myself in my office, worked late into the night, given everything I have. It starts to turn in on me, and I need air, space to stretch out, because there is so much there, waiting to be released. So Foxy, I hear you, I feel you.

I am exhausted, but I also feel like there is something in me that wants out, wants voice, expression, to not just be held but lived. And wants to spill out, rush out, breathe out, bleed out, and then come back in, transformed, embodied. It is that flash of a second when I feel a rush, a quickening of pulse, a movement, like I just heard something, some truth, and it was calling out to me, speaking right to me, and so my soul sheltered inside my body wants to connect with it, to be with it. And I don’t even know what to do with it most of the time. Because sometimes it feels like there are so many lifetimes coming towards me and pounding inside me, and I don’t think I will ever get to live them all, at least this go around. That tightness in my chest that reminds me there are choices, and some of them I have already made, and so they closed other doors. And yet, when does this become my self inflicted confinement and easy answer, shielding me from everything unlived inside of me that is wanting attention.

I want to move Hawaii or Mexico, to live by the ocean and let my hair turn to dreads and cover my body in permanent ink and do magic in my kitchen, where others somehow come and find me and we dance and I make them drinks and together we find their own heartbeat that has always been telling them who they are and what they must do.

I want to go walk the halls of hospitals, find those people lost and wandering. The ones who have just heard bad news, their family member still in surgery, and they don’t know what to do and the medical jargon is overwhelming and they can’t even find the fucking bathroom. The ones who are there for tests and they don’t speak the language and so they can’t even find the right floor, the wing of the hospital they have been sent to, and no one will help them understand the insurance paper work. The ones who lie in hospital beds and are sick or dying or healing, and sometimes all at once, and yet they don’t have a formal religion, meaning there is no priest to come and pray with them, offer them communion, and yet they possess a spirit that longs to be seen and I want to be there, seeing it, them, going into the unknown unmade space of god.

I want to can my own tomatoes and swim naked in waterfalls and know the sound of my voice as my own. I want to live in a tree house, a luxurious one of course, with an espresso machine and real beds complete with an crisp cotton sheets and mosquito netting and light weight cashmere blankets. I want to come home and find my apartment filled with orchids. I want to dive into the interior wilderness of my own psyche and the jungle of my human heart. I even of late had wanted to give birth to another baby. Which is not mine to do, but still, I want. I want to know that this life is mine, and no one else will come and live it for me. So what then? What will I do?

I want to be a dancer. Or a painter. Or a movie screenwriter. Or a cellist. Or a tattoo artist. Or a mountain climber. I want to have that thing that I do, that I give myself to. That I am willing to sacrifice for and bleed for, commit to and feed. And, its not about prestige. It’s about knowing that their was a calling inside me and I listened to it and followed where it lead me. But what if I hear so many things call out my name? I want integration, to not feel like I have to be any one thing. And I want the fierceness of passion that is willing to follow one thing. And I do not know how to have both. So it is this then that I want. To know, as Emily Bronte, “I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading.” Wherever that leads.

And right now, as summer feels to finally have come and it humid hot outside, even at night as I write this. Right now, as I am close to finishing another semester, knowing that there is only more left and then maybe more school, maybe a rest, maybe something I cannot yet even imagine. But that I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading. Walk into the world, this life, as to a waiting lover.

Zita, yes, I’m with you, ready, waiting, needing to all come together again.

I love you all.

Check-O In-O

Honey women -

I'm checking in in our 'ole traditional way:

**I want a new tattoo...Cerridwen - the Keeper of the Cauldron..if anyone can sketch out a cool rendition of this let me know.

**My hair is making me sick...growing it out is such a pain and I'm way to cheap for extensions (although I want them terribly) - I feel like I am in librarian mode.

**I've had dreams about birthing a baby - twins actually, on the second night - and it's disturbing...no more babies on my agenda and yet the traditional "giving birth to something new" doesn't seem to fit either...the time of birth for the twins was in argument: 0329 or 0340..hmmmm

**Buzz Kill came for a visit and we're redefining divorce in the 21st century. It's going to be lovely, I do believe, with happiness where it can reside still. Feels good.

**My neck is stiffer than hell from mowing like a mad woman today. I hate when this happens because I become so focused on the stiff nature of my neck muscles...obsessed nearly so that I think I wind up making them stiffer in an attempt to work out the kinks. Ugh. Maybe orgasm would help.

**I want our retreat! Do you see the little girl laying on the floor stamping her feet and flaying her arms? hahaha! Any ideas? I will sell a kidney if necessary!

**Empress: your rendition of the feeling of the plane crash literally sent chills through me...I hate to fly - I'm so scared the whole time we're in the air...I look like a woman in transition: blowing, breathing, rocking, rubbing my legs (this is of course when I haven't thrown up and passed out!) that was really eery for me to read.

**Foxy: I'm so glad to be a part of the circle your Crone instructed you to hold onto...I just adore you and yours.

**I too am a junk food junkie - hello to the Kettle Cooked Potatoe Chips!...somehow I've diverted my caloried into two glasses of Little Black Dress Pinot Noire though...it's working for me at this time.

**Noa - how did the birthday cake go over????? and...are you breathing?

Ladies...I need to dance with ya'll...I want to go to sleep at night knowing we'll meet in the kitchen in themorning to press our coffee out of the pot...I want to sit in our lazy, lovely circle and smoke a good pipe and let my inhibitions down ...

I miss....I MISS you women...
Zita-a-la-Pita!

Well I'll be damned...

I just posted a whole fucking note and hit publish ...AND....gone...I'll be back later my loves.

Zita

foxy: just some messy love on a beautiful day.

I spent the day in the sun working at an alternative healing/meta-physical fair. i was holding booth space for a friend while she did energy work on fair-goers. I brought my flower essences and my love for connecting with strange people; new age, radical, old, young, crippled, vibrant, long gray haired mantra-ists, crystal healers, laugh therapists, angel readers, palm readers, psychics... you name it. they were there. and my gift of engaging and talking and attracting and loving and plain old chatting was renewed. my friend who is the energy worker asked me to go there with her...she is less of a talker than me, less of a people person. Her gift as a vessel to hold space while others do their own healing is strong, she works with energy, not words. but i do, i have the gift of 'look ya in the eye and gab'. so we make a good match. the sun was so bright and the blooming flowers saturated the air with a sticky sweet dew. I wore a strapless dress, bright orange. someone put a wild rose behind my ear. it had been so long since i was able to wear the mask of Me, of Foxy. I am always in Mother Garb, small children pulling on my skirt, or hand, or climbing and holding on to my cheeks. Never am I alone, holding this kind of Spiritual Space.

I felt alive.

And then i realized it. i am such a people person. I thrive talking to people, connecting with them. and i have been out in the country, so alone. all alone. Not many people to run into and shoot the shit with. Letting go of my country house is a good thing. i trust jah, god, spirit, universe does have a perfect plan, a plan that i hold in my own heart and that i follow. you know me, i am no religious zealot. I find crap in dogma and naming a god a god, but lately, i have been personalizing my divine essence. my god or jah or jimmyjosephinesarahbob whatever. there is so much good to tap into from the Source of all Love and maybe it helps me to name that source. whatever. it matters not. what i am trying to say is that i trust this whole thing, this whole being poor and moving AGAIN thing. i trust what it will bring. I trust my god-love.

At this fair there was a woman who was beautiful and I just loved her instantly. you know, girl crush. She had the most solid partner/baby daddy and the sweetest, cuddliest little boy named Bodhi. He immediately came over to me and tapped his little two year old fingers on my lap and asked me to hold him. i held him for quite some time. When I tried to put him down, he held me tighter. chilled out on me, feeling the mama love, i suppose. He knew that my lap is usually filled and it's like second nature for me to hold little bodies against my chest. While i held him his mama was able to show me all her creations...stones and bones and gems and silk and feathers. the most perfect body adornment that i have ever laid my eyes on. i seek out jewelry makers. I stalk them and pray for them to come to me. And i found my most favorite one. I didn't buy myself a piece (oh but I will some day soon). but i bought one for Rocker. The girls and i will gift him it on Papa's Day. It's made of coyote vertebrae and kakau nuts and black silk and a crow feather. it's a magnificent. Powerful. Dark and light. Representing the magic and the trickster and the flexibility and the beauty that he is in our lives.

hopefully he will lay it on his collarbone and feel the power that lies within him.

* * *

i have been feeling wildly sexually deviant lately. i don't know. there is this crazy energy in me that wants to come out in some Triple X Rated forms. i want to go out and hump strangers. I want to get paid to have sex. I want to have foursomes, fivesomes, ten-somes in bathrooms of bars. I want to meet in the woods naked and wild, drums pounding and tree-fucking and really large warrior men pressing into my body and fucking me with rocks and leaves and bark i told Rocker about it and he was all about me and him being sexually deviant and yet i don't think he's part of it. I don't even think it's even sex that i want, really, i just want to go out on my own and do something outrageous, creative, wild, loud, naked, raw. have you ever felt like that? Just totally go out there and do something completely inappropriate and crazy. that is the energy i am holding right now. Trying to figure out what to do with it.

It came to me the other night when some mamas and i were dancing down by the bay, all our children safely asleep in bed with their daddy's watching them. We were deep into some good beer and the music was way too juicy not to move in the way our mother hips knew how to move and my girlfriend-mama came over to me and whispered in my ear: let's go get that guy and drag him to the bathroom and tag team him.

I just giggled at her. Agreed he was a hot one. But it sparked something in me the next day. I can't do things like that. It just can't. It. is. not. allowed. I am married and in love and a mama. But what can I do just as naughty. Any ideas?

The night i bleed last week a good friend had a dream about me. She said I was painting my face with red make-up, warrior style. and i looked at her and I said: Listen, I'll be back. I have to go out now, until late, I have work to do. But we'll hang out later.

Red warrior paint. Going out all alone. Mysteries. I am so in. I just can't figure out the place, the space, what this means for me and what I can do about it. I need to honor it. I know that.

I think it may be time to light up the fire poi and dance with the heat again.

* * *

My yoga is coming back to me. My practice. I decided the other day that it was either yoga or xanex and either one really would be fine but pills in the past made me a bit sick. yoga changed my life. it made me a teacher. it gave me space. i am worth the effort. i am worth calling out for my guides. i am worth the time alone to twist and turn and breath and squeeze out all the junk and exhaustion. my empress, i love that you made time to practice. breath that time my way, please.

* * *

I am going to see a Tibetan healer this week. He will listen to my pulse and no doubt say to me : lady, you are exhausted. Totally depleted. And he will be the third person in health care to tell me that this month. Maybe this time I will honor the words and sleep and eat and find the time to breath and stretch. Maybe I will take care of myself, take some time away from caring for others and look deep into my own body and begin to really heal. Maybe I will even think about ending this 6 year straight breast-feeding extravaganza.


* * *

there is so many other little totally un-artistic and silly tid-bits of love and life I could share, but just know I love you all, miss you crazy, care for you deeply. Know I am good and in love and inspired and feeling the beauty of my body and this earth we walk on, this galaxy we spin in.

one last thing, i met another woman at the fair. she was really old. but she shared with me that for the last 20 years, her and 12 other woman, young and old, had been meeting, gathering, connecting. she looked at me and said : you have a coven? a tribe? and i say, i sure do. and she said: good. celebrate that, learn with them, be with them, for the rest of your live.

thank you sirens. for this love. this trust. this circle. this beautiful and loving communication. for the listening. you are all such amazing listeners.

bless
F.

finding my stride here

to get to this place. no, to let go into this place. no judgements or filters keeping a watchful eye. write what is. the finger prints on your cheap ikea desk, crumbs in the keyboard, a glass of wine at your elbow. this is what is. this is my life. it echoes and haunts and tricks me. somedays I want to be one thing, the next hour something else. and is this okay? I ask but only I can answer.

tonight I want to be honest. raw. I want to find words that really say something. words that will remind me in 10 years why I cried this week over people who plunged to their death, falling from sky to sea somewhere at the edge of a brazilian island. but there is honor and rightness in a death like this I guess. this is how we all come in – coming from spirit into our mother’s warm sea. and so the return from sky to sea. maybe I should weep tears of joy for them. maybe their angels came and whisked them home before they felt the plane tear apart, shuddering and whinnying and creaking into oblivion. maybe the 11 year old boy who travelled all alone from his home in brazil to boarding school in england never felt fear. or pain. or regret. and I wonder if the mother who travelled with her seven year old son had time to kiss him one last time, if her eyes were an island he could hold onto as he felt his body spin away into the wind. these are the things that haunt me. wake me in the night as a dream unfolding. but it is not a dream. it is what I know. the images and stories stare at me from the computer screen and tell me it is real. so I send up prayers and my palms sweat and I see the lightening on the plane’s wings. and I wonder, will it be me someday?

death stalks me. not the death part. the dying part. if it is possible to choose, I’d like to choose a quick death. death that takes me before I see it coming. or death that gives me time. time to prepare and write letters to my children and leave advice for their wedding nights, give them their history to be kept and read over again when I start to dim in their minds. but please, god, great mother, spirit, cosmos…if you are listening, do not let me die in a fire. or drown. especially not in a plane crash. I don’t want to know it is coming when there is nothing at all I can do about it.

sometimes I think this might be the death I need. the death of surrender. because I don’t know how to surrender very well. I hold tight and hang on and force and resist and struggle. eventually I will give in, but not in the 2 minutes it takes a plane to go down. surrender is the essence of islam. in fact, I believe that surrender is exactly what the word islam means. and the willingness of people to die for islam, even when it is extremist, holds honor. to give one’s self over to a greater force. me? I fight the giving over. always. I fight and struggle and resist until exhaustion overtakes me and I just give in. but it takes me so much time and agonizing suffering. maybe this is why the airplane death stalks me and breathes chills down the back of my neck. if I went down in a plane crash, I would be taken before my process was finished.

…

right now I am alone. it is quiet. there are beef bones boiling on the stove to make broth. my blood feels weak right now and the accupuncturist told me that boiling bones makes good soup. so I boil bones even in this heat. I add brown rice and kale and lemon juice to bring up the iron content. it smells good, like earth and red wine and the hint of garlic blowing on the wind. my own bones need this gift of the cow. thank you cow for giving yourself so that I might be stronger. when you say this, you realize how much we take food for granted. packaged meat in the grocers cooler. too easy I think. a few weeks ago, turtle boy followed the lead of an older boy and smashed crabs at the ocean. he didn’t realize until it was over that he had stupidly taken lives. we talked about thanking the crabs for the lesson he learned, that they gave their life so that he could feel the true value of it. and we thanked mama earth for giving us her crabs, for the chance to build trust between us as we worked it through. that night, in our prayers, turtle boy told mama earth that he would never, ever, ever kill one of her creatures again. unless he was hungry. and even then he would eat the whole, whole thing. so I too give thanks for the flesh that feeds my own.

…

scar tissue does not stretch. it breaks.

I first learned this lesson while attending a birth sometime ago. it was mama’s second baby and she had torn badly with the first. her perineum was a solid wall of well-healed scar tissue. as this second child moved out of mama’s body and into the world, the mama yowled like a she-bear, unable to wrap her head around the fact that this baby could come through the band of resistance that kept them from becoming two bodies. all of a sudden, the pelvic floor released and baby’s head emerged. the scar tissue did not stretch. it had broken. but the breaking allowed opening and the baby was born.

last week I took my first yoga class in ages. as I placed myself in the hip-opening poses, I felt the tightness breaking. the scar tissue of holding and inflammation and tension snapping and resisting and creaking. so I gentled my way in…another milimeter, and then one more, easing into the opening. able to take only so much breaking at a time.

there are emotions in our bones, our joints, our organs. our bodies tell their own stories. and right now my pelvis is tight. I, of late, have been uptight and witholden. my pelvis, my source, my womanhood held hostage to my loneliness and grief, to my rage, to my resentment at my man for some shit that went down this year. and so my hips, usually so seductive and luscious and loose, they were rigid and brittle and the scar tissue needed to break.

I worked through the pain of opening my hips. I breathed while I broke through the wall, inviting space to move into me. I focused on the space instead of the tightness, visualizing the hip joints coming free, letting my upper thighs release, moving out of the way so the kundalini could rise from the center of my being. and by the end of class i was able to break through.

perhaps things are not related, but maybe – just maybe – opening my hips and loosening my pelvis has opened the floodgates. perhaps the language of my body moved through the resistance and said yes to the opening. the sex this week has been life-giving. after such tightness and protectiveness for so many months, sex a marital agreement rather than the rapture I craved, the swollen need has returned. joining with my man is a pleasure again, not a dutiful arrangment. and I feel roominess in my belly and lower back. my hips can make seductive circles, I sway when I walk. and the funny thing is that my expansiveness in my heart feels like the joy in my hips.

…

baby sleeping. god she is learning to scream. she is loud. sometimes when I say shhhhhh…I fear she will become a resentful mouthy feminist who goes to group therapy and tells the others that her mother never let her have her voice. but I can’t take it. and this girl, protest is in her bones. I don’t want to break her. I don’t want to silence her. I want her to feel safe and held and nurtured and understood. but can’t she just ask a little more politely???

…

closure, finding my way back out. never easy. nothing to wrap up. just words left here on the page that feel real. tomorrow will they still be my truth? i don't know. but it is okay to share them now, enough to stand alone just as they are.

Lila: truth telling

I’ve been feeling quiet. Not absent, disconnected, detached. But quiet. Like what is going on inside isn’t ready yet to be put into words. Or doesn’t have the language of words. I feel very present for myself, in myself, and yet unable to bridge that gap to communicating with others. And in my quiet, I’ve been in a truth telling brigade. Listening to myself, to what I know, to my truth. And listening to all of the ways I silence myself, tell myself to shut up, or hold back, or muffle what I feel, or skirt around the heart of things, or ignore my own gut responses. So I have been writing in a journal every day, writing my truths for that moment in time. No censoring or holding back or making pretty or being nice or protecting image or brushing off. Just me, and what I know and feel and experience and want and hear in my own interior and body. And tonight, I bring it here, to you, my Sirens, who have always been the space for me to quiet and hear myself and speak my truth.

My Truths of This Moment

I am eating like shit. Forgoing breakfast in the bustle of morning activity and getting George to school and then coming home and settling in to work. Getting caught up in work and not stopping for real lunch. And then come three and I’m starving: shoving cookies in my mouth, inhaling a whole box of crackers, passing by anything with any nutritional value whatsoever and not even sitting down to eat, but standing there, in the kitchen, like I’m a cat prowling in the night, looking for my prey.

I turned in my paper today and I didn’t like what I had. I had worked so hard on it and yet it was somehow not there, not right, not it, not what I wanted it to be. And this is only one part of a long project, my thesis, so its not like it needs to be complete, done, perfect. But I hated sending in work to my advisor I didn’t like and was uncomfortable with my own responses to it, realizing how much I don’t like letting others see the incomplete parts of me, the rough drafts. My sister Cat was talking about this. About how she was considering that maybe in her conversations with people she could not always edit, but instead let her words be the rough draft, trusting that if it comes out and she hears it and it’s not what she really wanted to say, there is permission to go back and make revisions. That what matters is this moment, and saying what is there, right now, without smoothing out the rough edges. And sending my “inferior” paper in, I saw this in myself, how I am sometimes uncomfortable with the less than polished, not perfectly expressed and presented in myself. Which is a joke really. Because in truth, I am so far from refined in that way. I am, in my humanness and my nature, rough, unruly, raw, volatile, messy, unkempt, loose threads and burn marks where I went to take the roasting pan out of the oven with my bare hand.

I have not showered in three days. I need to.

Elliot brought home peaches from the grocery store Monday night and just seeing them, their fuzzy skins and perfect lusciousness, it made me so happy. They mean summer is coming, in already here. They mean night after night of peaches sliced and smothered in cream, sprinkled with sugar. They mean sitting there on my couch, with the ceiling fan whirring and late night tv, old LA Law re-runs on cable, and walking into the bedroom, bare feet padding against the hard wood floors. They mean summer is coming, is already here.

I miss sex. School, writing, it has been consuming, more than I want it to be. And so I am writing late into the night and though we connect here and there, I miss regular fucking, miss wanting him, miss feeling flirtation and wondering what I will wear that night in bed. Its like I have creative energy and it can only go so many places, give birth to so many things. And lately, it has been my writing. Which I love. But I miss feeling that energy given to Elliott, given to us. I feel it building up, growing, ready. I want to come back to him. And even writing that, I did not realize I was gone. But I have been. And I’m ready to come back.

I feel this sadness in my heart center. Almost all of the time. It is like an ache, and sometimes, often times, I am not even aware of it. But then the moment I still, feel, it is there. And it’s not in the absence of happiness. Sometimes its most intense when I am happy. It’s like the part of me that knows, even when I forget, that all things die, that what is here is not forever, and what is here is beautiful. And so I ache. My heart aches. And maybe this is what it means to be human.

And this truth, one I know without doubt or second guessing, not even for a minute: I love you, each of you. I love this space. I love coming here. I love reading the words you offer from your own lives and how they connect me to you and also feed me, nourish me. I love us, this world we weave together of radical honesty and uncensored knowing and being held here.

Check in, old school style

Sirens -

I'm writing this check in as the body of an email, mostly for the sake of familiarity. It feels more intimate, cozy, snugger, more like a cradle for my words. I don't know what words those will be, and have noticed feeling a kind of distance with our new online presence. I am still open-hearted and open-minded about letting it unfold, but like Foxy, aware of a shift and needing to allow some time for myself to find my way in, us to all find our way in, to this new way of checking in. It's amazing how powerful just the visual cues are - seeing my words in a blogger box versus seeing them in an outlook window or a word document or scrawled in my notebook (not that I've done that in a while...) - each has such a different flavor, different set of associations and sensations.

Right now I am sitting in a Starbucks in a strip mall I rarely visit, having just clinched a new client. Funny to write it that way, reminds me of when hikers talk about "bagging a peak" - it always makes me bristle a little, or a guy bragging about the woman he fucked over the weekend - where do I come up with this stuff? Anyway, I don't usually refer to "clinching" clients or closing deals; this work is so much more personal than that, but it feels good actually, to have the freedom here to just say it: I will get money from this person. I will indeed be very invested in their experience while we are meeting, but outside of that, it is a living I am making. Well, it's not that crass really. And what's so wrong with money anyway, Noa? Geez Louise.

In reality, a couple of clients wrapped up our work together recently, and it was bittersweet actually. I became quite attached to them and their journeys along the way, and at the same time recognize that I am one of those guides, one of those people who serves a particular purpose, plays a certain role, shows up for a contained moment in someone's life, hopefully right on time, right when they're ready and it makes sense, and then we part.

And there is the money. The fact that Red brought home $1,500 for this whole month and I'm hoping to match that, maybe a little more, and we spent $800 on the car last month. And the crazy part, the counter-intuitive, inexplicable, irrational, pathological part of it is that the tighter things are, at least this month, the more freely I am spending money. I can't quite tell if it's willful denial or faith that things are going in the right direction, or just three sheets to the wind what's another thirty-sixty-ninety dollars on top of it all? It sounds irresponsible.

But I have to tell you: last week I got my toenails painted at a glorious nearby spa with waterfalls and salt pools and plushy robes; we spent three hours there and it felt like three weeks. And then Friday I "splurged" on new sandals - you have to understand that the old ones (same pair I've been wearing for about five years) were literally coming apart at the seams, and the new ones are so nice, so comfortable, the leather tight and taut across my foot, holding my foot, cradling it the way the box holds my words in. And then Saturday we "splurged" on a bed and breakfast the night before our big race, which just felt like the most well-deserved, awesome form of self-care to have a night with Red away from kids but not staying (as we had originally planned, up until literally the very last minute when I just couldn't do it) at a friend's house, a friend's house where we would have had to VISIT and stay up VISITING and get up in the morning and VISIT. I didn't want to VISIT with anyone. I just wanted to see Red, and eat dinner, and have sex and go to bed early in an anonymous place where we could get up, eat breakfast, not VISIT with anyone, and go run 13 miles for the very first time in our lives. Which we did, and it was, can I really be saying this, glorious.

On top of this, the haircuts I got today for myself and for Ariel & Wren, and some expensive shampoo and conditioner. I stopped short of the Aveda skincare products I really wanted to buy, told myself enough already, I have an almost full bottle of Neutrogena moisturizer and truly can't justify buying a $42 bottle of face cream. But where's the sense in any of it? Oh, and the burrito I grabbed for lunch today because I forgot to make a pb&j for myself...

Money. Yummy products. Time away together. Running far. Red loving me, wanting me. And me, trusting him in a way that I can only hope, have to believe in fact, is authentic, not just hopeful and based on fantasy, that he will succeed in this business, that the business will support us, and that what really sustains us is not the money, just as what breaks us is not the lack of money but only the lack of communication, or trust, or commitment. These are what sustain. I am living so totally in this truth these days I can hardly believe it.

I could share yet more evidence, but that's where our new arena has me a bit mum. I am still feeling out the lines here, how to blur them, whether to have to, in terms of identity and confidentiality and total freedom. Like Foxy, it's an adjustment. I keep saying this, feels like. I miss you all. I find myself peeking in at our new space here to see who has written, to eat your words like someone who hasn't had a real meal in days or weeks. To feast.

And there is my old self-consciousness again, questioning myself instead of writing with complete abandon, which of course is in and of itself a form of self-judgment or censoring. And there, dear Sirens, is what Lila would deem a mindfuck.

All mindfucks aside, I am surprised at how good, how not exhausted, how energized, how happy and pumped I feel after running my first half marathon. I loved the challenge it posed between me and myself, me and my mind, me and my body. I loved settling into such an incredibly slow pace and having to keep reminding myself that the slowness was on purpose, that is was ok, that it would save me from my biggest fear, which was/is running out of juice. I'm not sure what this fear stems from, but in this case it served me well and kept me from starting out too fast. Why I don't slow down all the time is the million dollar question. And amazingly, I'm already thinking of my next race. And yet, and yet, even after this, I still don't think of myself as a "real" runner.

I'm home now, having been kicked out of Starbucks (they were closing, though I wish I could say I did something really provocative and got booted). Red is washing his dinner dishes. The girls are asleep. We made banana muffins tonight and they surprised me by sitting right down to eat with me, no complaints, brown rice and this awesome tofu dish with onions and ginger and spinach and soy and coconut milk. Yum.

I know each of us is in our sphere, surrounded by our own wholeness, however partial it may feel sometimes. Coming here brings me home again, whole again. I find some peace, spilling my words, knowing you will read them.

I love you all.

Noa

blood and stuff.

Checking in...


Sisters, sirens. I just started bleeding.

I thought I was pregnant, my stomach was so bloated. I had been weirdly, mildly nauseas for days and just nasty, just in a nasty mood which I couldn’t find the root of. Walking around my house in a haze, I felt something slide down my leg. I figured it was some glob of mucus which would confirm my pregnancy fears. I reached my hand down to wipe and to my surprise my fingers were covered in bright red blood.

It has been 2 years and 8 months since I bled with the moon. This is only the fourth time i've shed lining since 2003. I don’t know what feels crazier; to have it back or to not have had it for so many years.

I got it yesterday and last night was a total trip. Between insomnia, panic attacks, strange, full body shivery chills (which I was sure was spirit matter haunting my bedroom) I only got 2 hours of sleep. I saged my bedroom over and over and forced R to basically rock me in his arms on the couch until I got drowsy and could fall to sleep. I felt like I was leaping between words, being sliced in half and being asked to go deep into the underworld, to where the roots meet the earth and then beyond. There was nothing fun about it in the moment. It was freaky and uncomfortable, and I fought it. Kind of like birth, though, I look back today and think, cool, that was pretty cool.

Powerful business that bleeding and moon thing. We actually get to bleed this much without injury or sickness. I am always surprised why we go to such great lengths to conceal it or ignore it’s presence. I’m always looking behind me down at my ass to make sure nothing has leaked through.

Taking care of the kids today did suck. I wanted nothing more than solitude all day long, to daydream in the sun, under trees, by the river. Or to roam the herb store. Or to sleep in bed without interruption. But the way it worked, I even had an extra kid, sweet Willow. Luckily all the girls played really harmoniously all day so I got to disconnect a little bit. But really, moon lodge is like the best invention ever and I can see why the wise women of other cultures practice/d it. When I was in Jamaica we’d joke about the country ladies bleeding huts. They were cast aside from the house from the man when they would bleed, being seen as ‘too dirty to cook or clean”. it sounds so horribly wrong, so unbelievably fucked up, but really, it‘s perfect and needed. I could just hear the mama’s in there, ‘dats right mon, mi so dirty wid mi blood. Do ya own cookin’, do your own everyting! I jus sit in here in bleed wid mi sistren” and then they’d cackle and laugh and bitch about their men and the kids and life in the third world and bleed right into the dirt floor.

I have nothing in my house. No blood protection. I have been using toilet paper and the baby’s old cloth diaper liners. The amount of blood coming out is not too much, not too little. It’s a deep red, new, nothing old and from before. It’s like the blood of birth, a new blood.

I mentioned to a friend my moon came back. She said to me ‘time for another baby’. and she’s right, but not a human baby, more like the birth of a new time for me. My baby is growing up, independent already at one. She needs me less and less. And my mind wanders to all the projects and work I want to do ‘outside’ the home. This blood is my indictator of transformations. I am back in the world.

That’s kind of fucking scary and welcome all at once.

* * *

I know this is my first check in in a while. I’ve been keeping inside a lot. My world is sorta of collapsing. To start going public with our words, to reveal so much about ourselves, is hard, necessary, but hard as nails. But to go public right now, when moments in my life are outrageously confusing and stressful and blurry and bloody, well, that’s intense. So I hold back a bit here. Not sure I am ready to undress completely yet. Bu I am warming up to strip for all. Today I will take of my shirt, slowly, and reveal the ache in my heart.

My whole perception has to shift. Completely. I always thought there was a home, the perfect home, to ground and lay my bones down every night in. A place to plant trees. A place to come back to after travels and global explorations, and really feel like I was back home, cozy, the same view out my bedroom window. I liked the thought of having a place to always keep in the family, for the kids, for their kids.

And now I am at a place, never sure if it was The Place, but still a nice place and one that I would have liked to be in for a couple years at least, three maybe. And now I am a crux of having to accept that another move, a temporary rental, most likely in the middle of the city, will be in our near future. Oh the guilt. To move the girls again. To take them from a place they love. To shake up their lives. And at the same time I believe in signs and being lead by my greater force. And maybe I am being drawn to the next step, the next opening. And the reason why will be revealed someday, someday I will have an a-ha moment know why we were meant to be here, for a short time, and meant to move on.

In the process of surrendering to all this has taken a toll on me. I spend a lot of the day with my mind wandering, fractured, trying to calculate logistics and visualize a new and even sweeter place, half the price of the current one, but with just as amazing gifts. I watch my mind sort and organize and cleanse and pack our things once again. I go over who I will give things to, what will go to goodwill. I try to manifest someone to come in and want to buy our place but still let us come up and play on the land with the girls, take the apples, collect the flowers, hang out with the horses. I manifest a buyer, not a forclosure.

This is all part of some kind of fucked financial karma we work on and the lessons that are always in front of us. It’s all perception, my perception. Home is were we all are. Things don’t make me happy. Be grateful for the basics, the bare minimum. My kids are resilient. If I keep myself healthy and happy, they will be kept healthy and happy.

I am tired of moving, but know i am being called to, for reasons that live deep inside my blood. We are nomads, a traveling circus of sorts; me and my clan. always have been. I know that movement is what we all need, some kind of peaceful river carrying us a long. a peaceful river. peaceful. river.

* * *

And I am off. For now. For you to hear me right now, seeing through the screen to my smile and dark and dancing childlike eyes, you’d know how much I love you all without me even having to write it out. But I will. I love you.


Bless up.
Foxy.

reaching the end of the line

thursday night was writing night. an hour or two by myself to listen to the thoughts that swirl and pace inside me like a tiger in a cage needing to find a way out. waiting for the moment that the tiger-keeper is otherwise occupied, unwatchful, so i can return to my wild self. waiting for opportunity and silence and that blink of a moment when snippets and fragments can be woven together into a cohesive whole, an almost-fully-written piece. this is the best i can do right now – a few strands of words strung together amidst the chaos of life.

pacing the apartment while the magician packs snacks, fills water bottles, and changes nappies to take the kids out for some fun, i wait for the silence to listen in and write. i grow weary and frustrated. the fire dies. the words evaporate and all i see are the dust bunnies under the furniture, finger prints on the kitchen drawers, a ring in the bath tub, vegetables gone limp in the produce drawers. there is messy chaos all around me and my shoulders tighten up with irritation, annoyance, resentment. how does anyone write surrounded by such mess? how does a house get like this???? why do i feel like the maid?

so a different fire starts to burn. it rages hot and furious. i stomp and huff and bang around. i’m pissed off at the crap that lies around waiting to be picked up. but soon the family is out the door and the stereo goes on – wu tang clan to match the aggression bubbling up inside. incense is lit. windows are flung open. and my steps loosen, the rhythm takes over, zen descends and the cleaning feels more like purification than punishment. i begin to move without thinking, clearing a path before me in no particular order.

it was hot, so hot, on thursday night. sweat dripped down my back, under my breasts, it prickled my forehead and wet my hairline. my fingers grew pruned with washing dishes, srcubbing the grates on the stovetop, removing the ring from the bathtub. i polished glass, shined chrome, wiped fingerprints away from stainless steal, swept floors, vacuumed dust bunnies, dusted surfaces. then i dove into the pantry, organizing a mountain of bags – paper bags, plastic bags, cloth bags, shopping bags with handles, gift bags, grocery bags. next i turned to shelves – tossed papers, moved tiny objects to their true home, put coins in the piggy bank, moved turtle boy’s books to higher shelves and gave monkey girl shelves of her own down low. laundry, in a pile 3 feet high, got dumped onto the table and i started with towels, sheets, dish cloths and cloth diapers. the magician’s clothes got put into his own pile so he could fold them himself. monkey girls tiny pink things were separated from turtle boys ripped and shredded and torn play clothes. my lacey panties and white beach pants and an army of workout clothes were all folded and put into their proper homes.

all the while, the magician and the children were out playing somewhere with cool water running, meeting city neighbors, making new friends. most days, going out to play with my family is where i choose to be. often i can ignore the untidy reality of our life and run out to play instead. to watch monkey girl learn the joy of the swingset, to see turtle boy scale new heights, climging trees and walking along the top of the monkey bars as though he is scaling a catwalk, seeing the magician with the baby riding high on his shoulders – these are the things i choose to do rather than stay within the four walls and act like the housekeeper.

but sometimes, when too many of these ‘play days’ happen in a row, i need to turn inward and find order again. to come to stillness. for me stillness needs empty spaces, clean counters, a sparkling tub that waits for me if that is what i need, a desk free of clutter and torn envelopes and lists that have been fully scratched off so that i can sit down to write if that is what i need. i need the blank canvas, the weeded and tilled and fertilized soil, the invitation to create, explore, unfold, release. nothing stifles my muse like clutter and chaos. i sit down to write in a mess and the back of my neck prickles with restless unease. words will not come because my mind is stretching outward to the chores waiting to be finished.

even though the evening started with me pissed off and irritated, annoyed that my family leaves piles of crap for me to tend to, i realized halfway through the process that i was exactly where i wanted to be, doing exactly what i wanted to be doing. making room in my life for the words to come. sure, i had simply wanted to sit down and write. it was my right. it was my night for writing. i deserved the time to bring order to the wildly spinning chaos that lives within me. i had wanted to write as a gift to myself. i wanted to write because words feel good and make me feel like a creative woman instead of a housewife. but last thursday, instead of writing, i cleaned the house and it felt really good. it felt good because i was creating the space for me to turn inward and listen to the voices that whisper inside.

I'm feeling ya, babes

Hey Noa and Lila....lemme just say...I'm feeling your pain...well, the proverbial pain, that is...cause doesn't suck-o-la when the pain isn't so obvious...when it's on the inside and no one can really see it and so to so many it doesn't even seem real...like something that can't be dealt with or doesn't need dealing with because if you can't see it then it must not be there?!

Well, puffo! I just want to make invisible in my life - read "lose" - those people who choose to pretend that only the visible things are the things deserving of attention. That only the wounds that leave a visible scar are the ones that are REALLY there...

Darlings, can ya tell that I'm right there with you? So many, so many are taking and not giving in my life right now...not that that's terribly unusual but I am certainly arriving at a time and space where that is becoming such an unacceptable way of being with me. A lovely freedom is coming from shutting the door on those relationships...the one's that I can, anyway...I'm wondering why in the hell I've waited so long to start exercising this practice. Now, it doesn't mean that more magical folks are materializing! That's the down side...however, there substantial less weight without all that fucking baggage.

Lila, get your paper done...that matters to you and, as a result, matters to me and I will encourage and motivate you to work. George will remember what you've done for him - I hope - and honor this passage in your journey. I love you and i want you to not only finish your work and school but to thrive in it because you deserve to give this world what you have to offer and that school is one of your venues.

Noa, baby I love pizza doughy bread so you send that stuff on down to me and I'll down it with a huge hunk of cheddar. And, by the way, you are more...MORE than enough...from where does the pressure come to be more....and you know me! Is it true?????

A nice little tuck into a featherbed with warm milk and an excellant movie to the both of ya!
Zita

Noa: Insatiable

Checking in.

I didn't let the dough rise. It is dense and pasty, resembling pizza but tasting more like cardboard. The girls didn't seem to mind - they are watching Stuart Little and I am sitting in the kitchen eating my cardboard pizza, decorated with avocado and broccoli and pineapple and mushrooms.

Makes me wonder what else I don't allow to rise in my life. What it is I suppress, or simply flash by, without paying attention or letting enough time lapse for something to take its rightful shape.

Things have been such a blur. I feel cliche writing this, the all-important "I'm so busy, crazy busy, blah blah busy crazy" mindset. I don't want to be this, to be a busy cliche. It makes me self-conscious but more so makes me sad, kind of nostalgic for my own self, with a nagging, quiet, tugging sense of what might be missing.

I went to an astrologer today, someone I have seen before and am settling into a nice barter relationship with. I trust her. She looked at Wren's chart and it was fascinating. Mars is right there at the tippy-top, announcing himself. Her willfulness and her sweetness, her need to be of service and also right, her connection to dreams and the imagination, her relationship with Red and Ariel and even our dog - it is all there in her chart. Fascinating. I asked Laura, the astrologer, whether we are "handling" her gender development in a way that would be supported by her chart - does that make sense? But even as I asked the question, I knew that her development, around gender and in general, is not something for us to "handle" at all, simply to support, witness, hold, nurture, and love.

Makes it sound so easy. And then I have to wonder if maybe it is, or could be if I let go or my Saturnian need for control, stability and structure. What if it were that easy, to let them go, just see that our kids are so complete, completely encoded, predisposed and predetermined, like a flower that will bloom, reveal itself as the only kind of flower it could be, and the only impact I can have as her mama is whether I water that flower or neglect it.

And believe me, I have done both. Killed more houseplants that I care to recall. Careless.

There was one night a few weeks ago when I was kind of out of my mind. Red was at the office late and I was fried. The girls were in the bathtub upstairs and I got sucked into Facebook downstairs. I could hear them splashing and laughing, rationalized to myself that this was ok. And at the same time saw myself, saw that I was checked out, saw that I was moving too fast.

Today, after I dropped them off but had a little window before my first client downtown, I walked slowly with my coffee towards Red's office where I've been spending more and more of my working hours. Firetrucks roared by, people in cars and on foot and on bikes, music blaring, everyone moving so quickly. I imagined that I had just emerged from a silent retreat, or months alone in the mountains, somewhere unplugged, slow. I felt the shock of it, the disconnect, not even disdain, just unfamiliar, blinking, like "this is what the world is?"

What am I missing? What are we missing in these days packed with movie nights and bedtimes and drop-offs and sweeping the kitchen again and again?

And then the answer comes, for now at least: nothing. Missing nothing, if I slow down enough to be awake. Not sure I believe this answer. Not sure I trust it. Not sure if it's bullshit or leaving something really important out and if so, what that really important thing would be? What I do know is that I have been positively craving attention in a way that I am not getting. It's not from Red - he is actually quite attentive. I see his efforts to recognize me, my work, my efforts, my presence, my needs. It's something else. Pampering? Sounds so superficial. Maybe some cross between ultra-super-amazing pampering and undivided attention. Someone's, but not just anyone's. Whose? Mine?

This check in is not exactly wrapping itself up nicely. But there's two minutes left on the movie timer, and then I turn into a pumpkin, I mean a mama.

I love you all. So grateful, always, for your undivided attention, the best pampering I get these days. And always, I feel greedy, hungry, dreaming of more, more, more. Insatiable.

Lila: check in

Aughghghgh! It’s been a hard few days. I am struggling, trying to tread water, feeling like any second now I’ll get a cramp in my calf and my head will just slip under. And there is so much here, not just in what is happening, but what it triggers, provokes, awakens.

I have this cold and it will not get better, mend itself, but lingers, and just when I think I’ve turned a corner I wake the next morning and its even worse. So much snot, congestion, coughing, ear aches, body aches, sinus pressure. And what I need to do is just rest, sleep, let myself be sick so I can then heal. But I have not known how to do that right now. George and I leave for the east coast this afternoon, fly out to stay with my parents for a week. We do this every summer and it has always been fun for him, and often fun for me. But this year is different. This year I am in school, on deadlines, trying to do so much (too much?). And then to get sick the week before, when I’m trying to finish my paper and get all the packing and arrangements made to leave, it’s just kicked my ass. It makes me doubt whether or not I can really do this – be in school and still be a mother and lover and friend. Because I feel like I am failing at all of it. The ugly part has been the feeling that I am doing the best I can and its not enough. And what I know as true beneath that statement is that somewhere in all of this I have not been honest and true with myself. And so “I’m doing the best I can” but doing what I do not even want to be doing.

I have had others get angry with me, be disappointed with me, behave as if I have left them down or inconvenienced them. And maybe I have done all those things. It is likely I have. And yet I don't think its because I told them no as much as I said yes when I the yes was not true.

The whole thing has been a mind fuck. I was unable to help a friend as much as she wanted me to help her. I offered what I could, but it still was somehow not enough and it ended it her crying and feeling overwhelmed. And I don’t know, am I a bad person for telling her that I had to leave now, that I loved her and had given what I could but now I really need to go because I do have to finish my paper before I leave? Elliot is upset, because I have not been available, because he wants to be with me and for me to be happy and relaxed. But I’m not. I want to be in relationship with him, to bring myself in relationship. But right now that means bringing myself as I am, which is sick, sniffling, tried, so incredibly tired, swamped and confused. This is what I have right now, where I am right now. And it feels like this is not enough. He says he doesn’t need anything from me, but then when I don’t seem to give him what he wants, he gets angry or withdrawn or moody. And my sister. I have bags of shit in her car, that I need to get from her car. It’s not her responsibility to take care of my things, load or unload. And I have been trying to get them, to take care of that. But I don’t know how. I don’t know how to when yesterday George was freaking out because I told him we had to pack and he didn’t want to pack, he wanted me to play with him. And Elliot was laying in bed, wanting me to just rest. And my friend, whose mom just died, was on the phone, crying. Not to mention, my paper is still not finished, not by a long shot. And so I need to go take care of it but I don’t know how to get all this done, when all I want is to curl up in bed and sleep for twelve hours. And then when my sister talks to me, she sounds angry. She doesn’t say she is. Maybe she’s not. But her voice is short, weary, sounds so frustrated. And all of it put together, I feel like I am failing everyone, like I am not enough, like when I can’t give people what they want they do not like me anymore.

And that last line right there, where does this come from? I have always identified myself as one who is rebellious, who follows her own path, who will do whatever she has to in order to take care of herself. I’m not one of “those” women, the kind who want people to like them, and will sacrifice her own voice to appease others. Except, apparently, I am. I sold myself out this week, abandoned myself, tried to do more than I could possibly do so as to keep others happy. But it was not about them. It was about me, and me wanting to protect myself from rejection. And then when I failed at all of it, I turned on myself and judged myself harshly. And I feel so sad right now.

Thinking of those lines from the poem by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another
to be true to yourself
If you can beat the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless and therefor trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty every day,
and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,
and still stand at the edge of the lake,
and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes."

So I am leaving this afternoon. Leaving much behind and taking much with me. My paper still needs to be finished by Friday and this means I will be spending my nights, once George is asleep, working. And I am also taking with me these words, this new knowing. I have not loved by appeasing. I have not served by pretending I have more than I have to give. I want to stand at the edge of the lake and shout yes. And for me, right now, this begins with no. With knowing what the no is, when the no must be said, the no being that which allows me to say a full and pure yes.