George + Georgia

George Nakashima, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Father Aelred Wall at the site of the Benedictine Abbey of Christ in the Dessert, designed by Nakashima, in the land where O'Keeffe (and Agnes Martin and so many others) created their most vulnerable work.   I visited this magical place last week.  I watched the mountain birds (I think they're swallows) nosediving into the river gorge and around my car on the 13 mile stretch of brown, gravel road leading to the monastery, a road with no railing and steep drop offs. The flight pattern of the birds matched the pattern of the flowing river.  It was all playing together,  joy in the form of harmonious movement, and I felt all of it in my own body.  It broke something up in me, in my chest, touched a buried longing, and made room for what was to come. 

I've just returned home from this trip to New Mexico. I went to experience the desert, which was still so foreign to me when I left, and then introduced itself as old friend. I feel tied to it forever now.    I went to experience favorite pieces of art by some of my heroes, in the land where they made their works.  heroes who really were something of the hermit archetype that has resonated so deeply with me these last years.  I feel them with me now, pressing me to create. 

 I went to breathe with a group of witchy women (and three awesome men) in David Elliot's Breathwork Healer Training.  I experienced the back of my heart open for the first time in many years.   I saw clearly my challenges going forward, how I've abandoned myself.  how I've shown up for myself, loved, protected - those things, too.   So many synchronicities and dreams, after years of silence.  I was blown away. blown wide open. I'm feeling so grateful to everyone connected to this particular journey for me - those with whom I shared it, those who introduced me to it, offered me the practice, to David, and to myself for doing the work.  I'm already looking forward to completing level 4, the final class, and connecting even deeper. 

  Those are the basics of why I went, the surface. What I learned about the deeper elements of why I went is for another post, maybe for a completely new blog. I'm still figuring out how to reawaken my writing and creative process here, whether to start fresh with a new site and blog (resisting the urge to tweak this one right now!)  I'm feeling it out, and will find it, but I don't want to wait until things are perfect to share again.  This hesitation to share kept me safe when I started using it here and in so many other areas of my life, but it's hindering me now.  It's time to let it go.

So much has changed for so many of us in these last several years, right?  It always does, I know, but this feels a more turbulent time.  Myself,  I left city life and moved to acres in the country, in a small county of creatives, makers/shakers, farm-to-tablers.  I've fallen in love with the mountains and land here, the rivers, with the animals, the people, with my own hands. It feels energetically like a greener sister to Taos, NM, which has my heart now, too.

 I've become a teacher of Kundalini Yoga, too - a year long journey that challenged me in every way imaginable, and got me back in my body in a tangible way, showed me my broken heart, created space for me to open it up again.

 I also left my marriage after many years of work and struggling to hang on.  I alluded to it in a post here years back,  the one about my daughter's tooth: "Standing over my sink, warm water on my hands, staring out the open window, crying, I tried to imagine how to let go of of a chapter in my life that is overdue for release.....It will fall away when it's ready, a little at a time..."  That's exactly how it went - a little at a time, a slow easing in, though when I wrote what I wrote then, I could hardly acknowledge it.  I made myself type it out then, so I'd trust it was a real knowing, that I wasn't going crazy.  That was the first step.  Showing up here and sharing what I wrote helped me validate what I did not want to face, what I couldn't say to anyone.  Then, later into this transition, my shame around the loss of my marriage would begin to prevent me from showing up, from connecting - to people, to my creative process, to this space, to my heart.  The initial instinct to protect there was healthy.  After all, there's a time to hold things close to the chest, to keep them secret.  but that time has passed, too.  I'm ready to be seen again in all the truth of my life.   

One thing I've learned about loss is that one loss often opens the door for more - people tend to leave together, sometimes sharply, sometimes softly.  Sometimes they leave because they can't watch you suffer, or offer their energy while you come unglued. and they can't do this for myriad reasons, many of them solid reasons around their own need for boundaries.  I see, respect, and honor that.  Sometimes they step away because you actually left them while you grieved - things were no longer reciprocal, there was not an even exchange.  I see and respect this, too, and I'm sorry to those I left behind in the midst of my all-consuming turbulence.  However they leave, you let them go. You send them love, and for some you leave an open space for return, especially the ones you abandoned in your shame.  I'm not alone here with this type of loss.  I've heard this over and over from those around me - this has been a big part of the tumult of the last several years. I think a lot about how this is coming to so many relationships from a larger, overriding cultural origin.  I want to understand it better, but my work now is to move through the feelings of it, how I've carried it in my chest and throat. 

I am entering the space of my Uranus half return now, in my (almost) 41st year, as Uranus moves further into Taurus.  Astrologers call it the "motorcycle transit" b/c it's what we know in the west as a midlife crisis.  I'm feeling it!  It's pushing me out again (reluctantly, but I'm listening).  There's a post on this topic bubbling up in me, too.  Many of us are here together in this transition, and it's a big one.  We can support each other through sharing. For now, I just want to say, you aren't crazy, and it's probably not menopause (yet).   If you want to read more on this, I highly recommend the book: 

--Astrology and the Rising of Kundalini, by Barbara Hand Clow.
It's also great for understanding Saturn return (around age 30).  And Chiron transit (50s) and wound.

I have many more tools on navigating Uranus half-return, and will post them soon!

I am still thinking about names!  but mostly in a philosophical sense, about the sacred act of naming, of calling something into being through word, anointing.  More specifically and concretely, I'm thinking about the naming process as I search for a name that feels right for the offerings I want to bring to my community, my beautiful community who has given me and my girls so much support and richness, held us, really, people as sturdy as the mountains they call home. 

So here I am, easing back in.  It wasn't so complicated.  It wasn't so huge a moment.  It needn't be perfect, over thought -- another thing I'm letting go -- and I don't need permission. 

Thank you for coming here even when I did not.  Thank you for reading now.  I don't know exactly where this space is going quite yet, but I know I want to invite you all along.