joy – unabashedly female

March 4, 2017

Eros. A Beautiful Thing.

Eros. It’s a beautiful thing.

I’ve often felt this underlying sense of grief that I cannot name. Sometimes it’s just a sense that I don’t want to be here. Not in the literal sense, but more of a kind of distancing from life. It’s like a contraction, like a pulling into myself. Which isn’t a bad thing at all. Everything contracts in the universe. Everything. And it expands. It’s a cycle of expansion and contraction.

But what I’ve noticed lately is that much of my pulling inward was learned. I learned to suppress my power – my Eros – because as a young girl it was much safer to relate through my powerlessness. I was a full-on force of nature when I was small – as we all are. Right? Do you remember this? Feeling like you were so alive, so full, so present, so much in love? I remember it at about the age of 3, maybe 4, before I started to see that the big people (adults) preferred little girls to be much less ‘active’ shall we say.

When I think of Eros, I think of the energy of Yes, the energy of life. Think about small children. They are all about the YES!

Eros is the ‘YES’ inside of us. It’s our vitality. Our yearning. If we’ve been down, depressed, grieving, sad, we can be out of touch with Eros, our life force. Suddenly when we come into contact with it again, we feel alive again.

Eros is the energy of change, that aspect of creativity that is a spark of consciousness desiring to be born. Osho once said, “God is in the new.” Eros is our dance with the Beloved that takes us out of complacency and into the arms of the mysterious force that cracks seeds, pushes sprouts through theÂ soil, and thrusts the blossom open.

Eros is intimacy, magnetism. Eros is growth. Eros is joy and abundance. Eros is the cherry tree in full cherry! (I love Neruda’s, “IÂ want to do with you what Spring does with the cherry trees.“)

Eros is our power. Power from within. And when we are not in touch with it, we are sad creatures.

Eros has been drawn down into a small, small sliver so that so many of us now think Eros or the erotic is simply about sex. It includes sex for sure, but it is so much more. And I feel we are suffering as human beings here in cultures where this is so because we no longer know Eros as the fullness that it is.

I often write of wholeness, but I haven’t written of fullness as much. I in my own journey I see how important this coming back to fullness is. I remember when I sat with Brigid’s flame in Kildare, Ireland, how the one thing I felt was fullness. The feeling was clear and distinct.

I’m now embarked on a spectacular dance with Eros. A full-on immersion into what this is. And this is taking shape in two ways – at least two right now.

One – Spring 2017 Writing Raw

This circle will be focused on Eros & Joy. It begins March 14th. The early-bird price ends tonight, March 4. We are going to have fun in this session. Not that the other ones are not, but this is the first time I’ve declared a focus for the session. Find out more and register here.

Two – I’m creating a podcast all about this exploration of Eros.

I have no idea where it will take me – or you my readers. I’m nervous about it, to tell you the truth. But as Fritz Perls once said, “Fear is excitement without the breath.”

I’d love to know what questions you have about Eros and invite you to contact me so I have some great places to begin my exploration.

Right now, we need to rekindle, even catalyze, Eros because it is the force that blossoms change and we are in the midst of a deep cycle of death and rebirth. What is coming and how can we midwife it? Through embracing Eros in our lives, through opening to the source of Eros within us.

Stay tuned…

August 12, 2014

For Life’s Benefit

We live with many powerful beliefs in our culture.

Life is conquerable, controllable.

We are entitled to a ‘good’ life.

What gets in the way of the ‘good’ life is a burden.

If we don’t have a ‘good’ life then there is something wrong with how we are living it.

Do whatever it takes to get over, get rid of, move past, the bad stuff…so we can get back to living the ‘good’ life.

But this IS the life. All of it is life.

The truth is, we aren’t entitled to anything. We don’t deserve anything. We are given life with each breath. And we live until we don’t breathe anymore.

Last week, my grandson received a new heart valve. He’d had two open heart surgeries in his first two years of life (his first on his first day of life). After his second open-heart surgery when he was just two, the doctors told us that researchers were working on a valve that could be delivered to the heart by catheter through the artery in the groin. It seemed like science fiction that he might not have to endure another open heart surgery when this valve wore out.

Eleven years later, this past week, that’s exactly whatÂ we experienced. He received his new valve without having to open his chest again.

His life is not easy on many levels. Multiple complications from that very first day of life have presented him with a life that has its challenges. But this life is hisÂ life. It only seems it should be different when we compare it to some damn ‘ideal’ of what life should be, a fictional ideal that is paraded around our culture on a daily basis, but an ideal that just doesn’t exist.

Yes, on the surface, some have it ‘easier’. Yes, on the surface, some have it ‘harder’. But none of those comparisons actually help in the living of one’s life. And, at the most basic level, the comparisons are not logical, because life doesn’t compare. Life just creates and lives its creations.

What does help is how we hold life. Do we see it as a burden to try to get through? Do we see others problems, or our problems as something to fix so our lives will become the glistening, gleaming perfection we’ve been told they should be?

Or, do we live them in open honesty, at least with ourselves. Do we tell ourselves the truth? Do we allow ourselves to see the messiness of human love that we are, love in a human, frail body, attempting to live as if we are perfect, while all the while denying the divine imperfection that is our humanity.

Life isn’t supposed to feel ‘good’ all the time. How do I know that? Because it doesn’t.

What I discovered this week was that I was holding things in my life as if they were a burden. I was tired of grief, tired of pain, tired of feeling as though another shoe was going to drop. A part of me wanted that easy, gleaming life. But I came to see that it was this very perspective that was causing it to feel like a burden. I was making itÂ happen in my own mind. I was pushing life away, rather than drawing it near to me.

As the day of my grandson’s procedure (yes, they call it a procedure instead of a surgery because he didn’t have to be opened up!) grew near, I realized how damn lucky I am to be his grandmother. And after the procedure, as I sat next to him in recovery, as he slept and his heart beat with gusto, I laid my head and hand on his heart and felt the life move through his body. I felt the pleasure of being with him, the tenderness of the moment borne from joy and elation that he had a new, vibrant lease on life, that he was alive.

I touched his shoulder and kissed his forehead. And, I simply sat with him and felt grateful.

Life isn’t supposed to feel ‘good’ all the time, but it can feel real.

Life isn’t binary, a series of on and offs, zeros and ones, goods and bads, blacks and whites. It just isn’t. No matter how hard we try to make it that way, it isn’t.

Life isn’t a machine. It’s isn’t the enemy. It isn’t something to fix.
I am not a machine. I am not the enemy. I am not something to fix.

There is no good life waiting for us at the end of the rainbow.

Everything moves. Everything changes. We control none of it. All we can do is dance, open to what is here, do our best to be present to it, receive it, sit with it. We can touch it, love it, feel it pulsing, grateful to know it as it is. We can hold our life in our hands and know it wasn’t made for our benefit, it was made for life’s benefit.

This has been the greatest reminder for me…

I was not put here on earth for my benefit, I was put on earth for life’s benefit.Â Am I living this?

August 20, 2013

In My Skin

I’ve come here to live in my skin. Not to hide away from life, but to shimmy right up to this ever-so-thin layer of dermis so I can truly touch and be touched.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. To relate to life, caressed by breeze, by sun, by dew.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. It’s the only thing that separates what I sometimes believe is me from what I sometimes believe is not me. It’s a tender line, isn’t it? This thin skin â€“ a membrane so thin it defies rationality.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. A soft wrapping around the tender-most flesh, it gifts me with what many only speak of in hushed tones – one of the most joyous experiences of life – that of being touched, deeply, reverently consciously.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. To know the true intimacy of life is to know the sublime interaction that happens here. It is so simple, yet so profoundly mysterious. We can describe these bodies in scientific, physiological terms. We can say, “Oh yes, I know how it works.” But when we touch another with our whole being, our whole awareness, at the point of connection there are no words to describe it. Nothing we can say can capture this moment of exquisite intimacy.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. To be alive, fully and vulnerably, is to offer this skin to the world. To do so is to allow yourself to be touched by what greets you.

Iâ€™ve come here to live in my skin, yet along the way I learned so well how not to live in my skin. Each of us has moments when what we experienced was too much, too painful, or too frightening to feel the immensity of the sensations of those experiences.

Over these past many years, Iâ€™ve been taking this long journey back into the body. Along with many things, one thing Iâ€™ve discovered is that sometimes what I long to say can only be said through my body. Sometimes, there is no way to say with words what the body longs to say. It must be said with touch, with movement, with song or dance.

Maybe thatâ€™s our journey, to come back into the skin. We are here in bodies.Â We are alive in these bodies, in this skin that was created to know the sublimity of touch and sensation and life.

Why are we alive if not to fully live in this skin?

April 17, 2013April 17, 2013

A Living Goodbye; A Living Hello

mothandflower — Life is: Life relating to itself, Knowing itself through relating.

Eighteen years ago, today, my husband died suddenly before my eyes. It was quick and shocking.

The grief journey it took me on was anything but quick.

A friend on Facebook just now asked, “How does one say goodbye and go on?”

How do we live a goodbye and grief? How do we live hello and joy? They go together, goodbye and go on. They go together, hello and go on.

For me, I’ve found it’s a living goodbye, and a living hello.Â It’s all tangled together, in a beautiful, and sometimes not so easy, dance.

Gary’s death was a doorway into awakening to the depth and beauty, the light and dark, the sacred and mundane. It was a doorway into a true relationship with life, because we can’t be in relationship with life if we are not in relationship with death.

I am not romanticizing it. It’s not been easy, nor was it easy for my daughters and family members who grieved Gary’s death. It hasn’t easy forÂ the hundreds of 9/11 family members I worked with, or the hundreds of clients and students I’ve taught and coached. And, I am certain, it’s not easy for you. We all know grief.

If we are looking for easy, we won’t find it in grief, and we won’t find it in life.

Yet, we can find ease. We can find softness and grace. Life is filled with grace if we open our arms to be held in love. Not romantic love, but the love that carries us through it all, even the very painful things we are now witnessing in our world. I write this two days after the Boston bombings. I write this as other Â bombings are taking, and will take, place in our world.

Today, I celebrate Gary, our daughters, our four grandchildren, our life together, and the years since that have, I hope, made me a more real and loving woman.

Today, I celebrate you, your grief, your journey, and the way you grace this world.

Today, I celebrate our humanity. In light of all the tragedies we face, the love that we are is greater, by far, than any hateful and violent acts we do to each other.

This I know.

September 11, 2012

Grief knows this. It will lead you home.

No words can know how a broken-open heart feels.

When my heart first broke, it felt as if something reached into my chest and tore my heart apart. Then, when I realized my heart was not broken, but breaking-open, I could feel a bit of light peeking in. Just a bit. Slowly, very slowly, the light began to grow around and through the scarred tissue that had wrapped its way around my heart. And as the light grew, the scars softened and the tissue that is my heart began to return to a pinkness I once knew, but only vaguely remembered in the cells.

The Heart knows.

It remembers.

It longs to break open.

Grief knows this.

It is intelligent.

It will lead you home.

I don’t say this lightly, or flippantly. I know grief, well. I know joy, well. They are close cousins.

June 25, 2012June 25, 2012

Erotic Visionary: Following the Instinct of Love, Joy & Creation

Connecting with life.

I’ve just returned from a beautiful weekend retreat at Ratna Ling retreat center, near Cordoza, California, a spot in the coastal mountains of northern California. The land is so beautiful here. The retreat time was short, yet filled with so much wisdom and learning. I learned so much about myself, how I hold back from a truly fulfilled life of truth and transparency, and ways to access my instinctual self more readily. All of this so amazingly fits in with my last post on being an erotic visionary. I thank you for sharing that post, and also thank those of you who shared yourself in the comments of that post.

At the retreat, I loved the exercises we did to discover ways in which our instinctual selves are so accessible and so ready to be expressed more fully. In one particular exercise, we were asked to go exploring in twos. Our explorations were to notice and follow our instincts through our senses.

It’s amazing what happens when we allow our instincts to guide us. My partner and I spent thirty minutes exploring the land around Ratna Ling center through our senses, allowing ourselves to follow our instinctual impulse.

We climbed into the center of huge redwood trees hollowed out by fire. We stroked moss covered bark and the insides of charred redwood trees turned silky over time. We found the tiniest red flowers sprouting from minute lichen. We delighted in a Yucca plant in full flower. We took turns sharing with each other what we were immediately drawn to.

What was I drawn to?

Beauty, Color, and Life.

Contrast, Joy, and Tenderness.

The intense color contrast between sunlit orange Tibetan prayer flags and the bright blue skies that canopy the hills of northern California, just miles away from the Pacific Ocean. When I had first arrived at the center, I was delighted by these flags. In giving my full attention to this delight, I gazed at this contrast and realized how much I LOVE color, light, and contrast. This love has been with me from as far back in my life as I can remember.

The tenderness of flower petals, how the light shines through them, and how they so fleetingly exist in a world where everything dies, where everything in creation eventually dies.

The experience of the impulse itself and the very simple, yet oh so important,Â joy of discovery what life is displaying just around the corner… discovering what lies at the other end of the instinctual impulse.

Eros

We have these impulses all the time, yet how often do we allow our eyes to simply land on what they want to see, our hands to touch what they long to feel, our ears to listen to that which they long to hear?

We are so strongly socially conditioned to inhibit our instincts. Yes, some of that conditioning is a good thing; AND, some of that conditioning inhibits the soul from freely expressing itself in the world, of following the instinct of love, joy and creation – eros.

When we follow this instinct, we connect with life and with the earth. When we trust our instinctual selves, we rediscover an aspect of self that we buried so long ago.

Learning to trust this instinct, and guiding others to trust this instinct as well, is where my work is leading me. My work is shifting in a direction not yet fully formed, which is exhilarating. I’m following the trail of where my soul is calling me, where the instinct is leading me.

And, you?

If you had fifteen minutes to follow your erotic impulse with a friend, where would your instinctual self lead you? Take fifteen minutes today to follow this erotic impulse, whether with a friend or alone. Notice the feeling of the impulse, the pull of what you are drawn to. Notice where you stop yourself. Just notice what it feels like to follow the instinct of love, joy and creation.

Then, come back and share with us what you discover in the comments. I look forward to learning from you!

April 29, 2012April 29, 2012

Acceptance

There is no bad dance or good dance. There is only dead or alive.
~Lori Saltzman

Today, April 29th, is International Dance Day. So many of us worry about how we look when we dance, yet when we really let loose, the joy could fill a room. Let yourself be alive, fully alive. Get up, put on the music, and move.

Today, I’ve a guest post over at Jamie Ridler’s place. Jamie’s site is full of amazing things…like Jamie.

I’m honored to share this story. I’ve never written about it before and it’s a story that is so close to my heart. I’d love to share it with you…

Sitting on the kitchen floor with my back against the moonlit-night-blue wallpapered wall, my entire body lets go as I read the words. The tears, so long held in check, finally find their way down my cheeks, then breasts, belly and legs. These flat surfaces define a room that is empty of people these daysâ€“ except me. At one time this room knew so much life, but now I am the only one left to savor this sweet, sweet moment. Continue reading…

Have a beautiful day dancing…

Awaken the Wild:Â a 7-Day Virtual Sensual Immersion from Molokai

I’m traveling to Molokai in just ten days to attend another gathering of women. Yes, this seems to be theÂ nature of my life these days.

While I am there, I’m going to be sharing my experience on this wild island through this complimentary eCourse, “Awaken the Wild”. Over seven days, you’ll receive a daily email that will direct you to a password protected page with audios, images, poetry and practices to bring this wild land into your life and awaken the wild land within you.

You can read more about this eCourse,Â here.

I’d love to have you join me…join us. Many women are already registered for this virtual immersion to Awaken the Wild.

Let’s discover the wild land within, together.

August 3, 2011

Muddy, Wet and Messy

The Big 55

My time in Hana was a gift. A big, beautiful birthday gift to me. I turned 55. That makes it sound sort of like my odometer rolled over (do you watch yours when it nears repeated digits, too?).

I guess my odometer did roll over. I’ve traveled a lot of miles in my life.

Or maybe it’s a pedometer. You know, the kind that measures your mileage on foot. That would make more sense, since I have two of those.

Muddy

On Saturday, I hiked the two miles up the side of Haleakala, the dormant volcano on Maui, to Waimoku falls, which fall from 400 ft above.

(insert cool waterfall shot)

Saturday morning was rainy on and off. The following evening we’d had a long steady rain, so the trail was exceedingly wet…and muddy. I forgot to bring my tennis shoes, so I was wearing my thongs. As I trudged up the hill, I could feel things getting more slippery along the way. I found myself trying to stay ‘clean’. Big smile, because after the fact, I can now see how futile this was!

At the top, just prior to the falls, you have to cross two parts of the creek/river. This didn’t sound like fun in thongs, so I took them off and proceeded barefoot, making sure to put the thongs back on across the way.

On my way back down the hill, I was still trying to walk in my thongs, but it was more slippery by now because the rain had been falling for a bit. Just as I was feeling frustrated with myself and the mud, a group of people going up the hill came into view. One of them was a teenaged girl. She was barefoot. She took one look at me and said, with a smile, “Why don’t you just take them off? I did.” I looked down at her feet and, sure enough, bare feet covered in mud.

I thought about it for a moment, and realized I’d been not fully present to everything around me because I was afraid of slipping and gettingdirty. Here I was in this glorious place and my attention was more on walking than on my surroundings. So I took them off and walked barefoot. The mud was warm and squishy. Why had I been avoiding this?

I felt connected. I was aware. I enjoyed it so much more. I had a deeper sensual experience through my feet.

It was so freeing because by taking off my shoes, I stepped right into what I had been trying to avoid…getting dirty. Suddenly there was nothing to avoid anymore. Why was I trying so hard to avoid the mud?

A similar thing had happened back in January as I hiked in Tilden park. The paths get very muddy there in the winter and spring months, and I would try to keep my running shoes from getting muddy. One day in particular, I was trying to get through a patch of mud and slipped right into it. Once I was dirty, it didn’t matter anymore. I felt lighter, more free and enjoyed the walk much more.

Wet

I had realized the same thing on my first full day in Hana. I was swimming at Hamoa beach. My towel and bag were on the sand. It began to rain quite hard. I noticed many of the people there rushing out of the water to get their things and carry them to a dryer place under the trees. I decided to get out and attempt to do the same. We were all trying to keep our stuff dry.

When the rain subsided, we wentÂ back to the beach, laid it all out again and went back in the water. Sure enough, back came the rain. Here I was in the water all wet, and I was worried about keeping my stuff dry. I thought about it and realized there was nothing in my stuff that couldn’t get wet. So I gave up trying. I continued to swim and it was quite an amazing experience being in the warm pouring rain while swimming in the warm ocean.

Water, water everywhere.

When I did decide to return to my bungalow, I gathered my things and put on my hat and it began to rain again. My hat was dripping wet, my cover up was dripping wet. My towel was dripping wet. I was dripping wet. Everything was wet. There was no longer anything to keep dry, and it was incredibly liberating. Nothing was getting hurt by getting wet.

In both cases, I let go and relaxed more deeply and immediately into my surroundings. I was more in tune with the sensual nature of the experience itself, and not surprisingly, with my own sensual nature. Without the worrying brain spinning fast, I was available to notice and feel what was immediately present…and the most noticeable thing was freedom, with a gentle joy following closely behind freedom’s feet.

Messy

I’ve been contemplating this in my life and wondered how often I hold back on doing things completely for fear of getting wet or muddy (either literally or metaphorically).

Where do I fear jumping in because it might get messy?

How much less awareness is available when much of my awareness is focused on my worry or fears?

I can now feel how liberating it would be to let go this way in everyday life.

Most of our fears are not really fears of immediate danger. They’re more like fears of avoiding things we’ve been conditioned to fear experiencing…like getting too muddy or getting our things wet, lost, broken, stolen, etc.

Avoiding messiness is avoiding life.

The joy I felt when I let go into what I was already immersed in was so much more real than what I had feared.

Life is in the mud, in the wet, in the full-on contact with all that we’re swimming in. When I am in avoidance, I am not living.

Yes, a good pair of pants might get stained. Or not. But,

rediscovering this place of joy is priceless.

p.s.

the mud washed off.

my pants cleaned up.

i dried out.

pedicure is still mighty fine.

I am changed by it all.

…

and, you?

I’d love to know about a time when you let it all go, when you realized it was futile to keep avoiding what you were obviously swimming in…

July 3, 2010January 30, 2012

Dig

“When you go out next, take a look at the dirt at the side of the road. Blonde dirt, ochre red dirt, black dirt, brown dirt, yellow dirt, clay white dirt, green dirt. Then, look inside your house. Most everything in it came from the dirt first. Our Mother is everywhere: metal, plastic, paper, glass. Don’t tell me you have no ideas. Dig.”

~Tending the Creative Fire manuscript, byÂ Clarissa Pinkola EstÃ©s

…

Last Thursday, I painted with Chris Zydel, (@wildheartqueen for you twitteraties).

Chris leads Process painting. Beautifully.

…

The Process began with picking my paint colors and brushes.

For me, this process was about digging. The painting I did didn’t come from the top of me. My head. It came from someplace deep down in the darkness, someplace where the paint flows like honey, like blood, like dirt…I guess that would be mud.

As Chris said right from the beginning, it’s not about the painting, it’s about the process, about what’s happening within you as you choose colors, choose brushes, face the white paper, become the conduit for seed to sprout from the dirt, and for the mystery to come to life as creation.

At the very root of it all, it’s a big mystery. I didn’t know what would come out on the paper. I don’t know what it is or even what it means. It just came out. It’s as simple as that.

I noticed, as I painted without a plan and without a story, that it was fun. I had fun simply watching it all happen. I felt playful as the color changed the paper from white to painted. It was spontaneous. Joyous. Innocent.

It was a lot like the painting I did as a child at pre-school, where long tables were made from saw horses and wood, long tables that held clean white butcher paper.

Back then, I just LOVED to see the paint flow onto the paper. That’s the part I remember most. The colors. The mixing. The colors mixing and turning the paper from white to painted to creation.

…

Sometimes, what is flowing wants my mind to join in, so the creation can have meaning, can be shared with words, can have a different kind of impact. Sometimes, there’s no invitation to the mind to join in. I like those times. They’re empty. Nothing here but dirt and digging.

…

I could try to make something up about what it means, but why?

Dirt is where it all comes from.

I just dig.