It’s taken me forever to start this letter. 40 years since we first met, since you wound yourself around this heart and showed me what freedom could look like – one hundred at least of its many faces. 40 years since I followed the sultry vocal strains and outlandish images into a world of infinite possibility, the wry self-referencing smile and shockingly beautiful direct gaze stealing away my breath into a welcome delirium. Pot, cocaine, sex, endless nights of talking and dancing and mornings of shaking the neighborhood – your voice shrieking while I readied myself to float through a day of high school, wishing my life looked more like some image that would make you nod, grin, give your acerbic stamp of approval.

I had to walk over roads of self-concern to get anywhere near that. But in hidden places, away from prying parental eyes, I knew I was free. I dressed it up pretty and acceptable while they controlled the four squares and a roof, and I flew high high high under the radar, the wild life of a teenage girl in the 70s, after free birth control and before AIDS. Marin County was a party time petri dish, yes, there really was too much money and just enough drugs and hot tubs.
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A dream that everyone has the ability to experience freedom. Right now, whatever your circumstances. It’s your birthright.

We think certain conditions have to be present to experience freedom. We have to be healthy, we have to have a good job, be free of debt. We certainly aren’t free if we’re in the grip of illness and pain, if we have a serious diagnosis. We aren’t free if we have to change our lifestyle or else stay sick. We aren’t free if someone we love is ill. We can’t be free if we grew up in difficulty, if our family of origin life was less than ideal, or outright abusive in some way.

How can we be free and happy even in the midst of physical and/or emotional pain?

These are dark times. Anyone reading the news can see it in the world at large. As I’ve written about before, it’s also a dark time of year, these weeks leading up to Winter Solstice. We’re waiting for the light to return. It can feel like a loooong wait.

Happiness is a practice. It takes intention. You need a true and deep desire to be free and whole. It takes a commitment to showing up for your life, and a willingness to take a radical stand for YOURSELF and your happiness.

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Ahhh, summer winding down. I just returned from a blissful and much needed 2 weeks of relaxation on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, after working quite a bit harder than I could really handle gracefully for a number of weeks.

I wish I could say that my self-care is always perfect, but I’d be lying through my teeth. Sometimes, life demands what it demands, and the best I can do is surrender to what needs to be done. Goddess Gather was a great success, and I have no regrets. But, my health is still too fragile to support the kind of hard work required to put on an event of the scope and complexity of the vision we hold for the Gather.
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It’s Easter. It’s my birthday week. It was a full moon lunar eclipse.

I’m an Aries who usually starts announcing her birthday at least a month before it arrives. Not this year. I took myself to the beach. Solo. Batteries in serious need of recharging.

In January I had experimented with some foods that I’ve been avoiding for many years. A bit of honey here and there. Some 90% chocolate (read “10% sugar”). Yams. Even some … potatoes. Non-GMO corn chips.

I just kept thinking, “Damn it, I’ve been such a good girl for so long, surely I’ve healed enough to be able to tolerate a few more foods! I deserve this!”

It became evident in February that I was in an autoimmune and yeast flare. Fatigue, foggy head, body aches. And, fatigue. Really tired.

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People sometimes ask me what kind of training I have to do the counseling work that I do. That question always makes me want to laugh and cry.

Yes, I have training in multiple spiritual, psychological and coaching modalities. Personal healing and spiritual awakening has been a central focus in my life since my late 20s. But, I didn’t embark on this path to heal others. I was crawling through the muck of my personal story, and was sick and tired of suffering.

It has not been a straight line, this healing path. There’s a saying that we travel in spirals as we heal, revisiting similar issues cyclically. Each time you find yourself seemingly going over the same ground, check in and see what’s shifted since the last time you were here. Are you catching the patterns faster? Do you have more awareness about the process you are in? Is there are part of you that is not quite as caught up in the story as it plays out? This is progress. We heal, sometimes slowly, and sometimes more quickly. But, movement is happening. Can you give yourself credit for that?

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My family attended a Beltane festival yesterday, an ancient Celtic celebration of springtime and fertility. We celebrated the outgoing May Queen (curtsy) and King, and welcomed a new May royalty who will hold and embody in sacred trust the ability of the earth and all its inhabitants to bring forth new life.

That may be literal or metaphoric children. We birth our ideas, we birth our creative endeavors, we birth our changes in our work-in-the-world. We all wrote down what we wanted to bring into life in the coming year on a ribbon and tied it to the Maypole – the sky god’s very own phallus resting in the earth mother’s yoni. We danced and sang and wrapped that phallus with our sincere wishes for prosperity and love and health and world peace. (In true Beltane fashion there were a few wishes expressed for really good sex, too.)
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