Spiritual musings – Mindful Mama

the tax of racism

Reading Matthew Desmond’s Pulitzer Prize winning Evicted has left me feeling nauseous and discombobulated. Thanks to a recent reading of Palma Strand’s article “’Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall…’: Reflections on Fairness and Housing in the Omaha-Council Bluffs Region as well as viewing of the Open Sky Policy Institute’s Policy and Equity Webinars, I had recently become aware of the effects of 1930’s redlining practices on Omaha’s current situation via statistics like these:

Half as many Black households own homes as white households.
Due to middle class wealth being accumulated by home-equity, the wealth of Omaha whites is 20 times that of Blacks.
Due to our city custom of annexing private neighborhoods built by private developers, we have a severe lack of affordable housing in Western Omaha as well as a city-wide shortage. (There is affordable housing available for only 19% of households eligible for it).
Our city’s Western-most school district is 88% white with 6% of students receiving free or reduced lunch while our Eastern-most district is 29% white with 74% receiving free and reduced lunch.
Renters living in non-white census tracts are evicted at a rate of 41 per tract, per year compared to 17 for those living in white census tracts.
Most of these evictions are in properties with open code violations, meaning the renters are awaiting the landlord to fix a roof, toilet, hole in the wall, etc. (the average critical code case is open 672 days in Omaha).

I wasn’t prepared for the above stats to be made flesh and blood through the stories of those affected by federal, state and local policies in Evicted. To witness trauma upon trauma being compounded by a complex system of access and denial, I was left frustrated and dismayed. The people I met in Desmond’s work are from Milwaukee, but I am sure their stories echo those of Omaha’s most unfortunate renters: not calling the police on domestic violence due to fear of being evicted for “nuisance calls”, deciding between utilities, food or rent, taking sponge baths with boiled water for lack of a functioning shower, five school transfers during middle school alone due to evictions and moves, sleeping five to a bed-less room, having to take what’s available because there are twenty other families who would happily take the apartment with a hole in the roof and a busted out window…

Why aren’t landlords being held to the standard of making sure apartments are habitable? Why isn’t local, state and federal government doing something to address the problem of evictions for the short-term? And long-term, why isn’t there enough affordable housing to keep the market competitive? Desmond provides options to address the affordable housing crisis:

Provide legal counsel for all those going to eviction court. Studies have shown that evictions decrease up to 90% when legal counsel is provided. LB419, discussed last week in committee, addresses just this.
Create federal housing vouchers to subsidize renters so that no one pays more than 30% of their income on housing. (Some pay up to 70% of their minimum wage income on uninhabitable shelter.) This would require a statute making it illegal for a landlord to discriminate based upon income level. LB196, also discussed last week, addresses income discrimination.
Create more Affordable Housing. This will require brainpower, creativity and heartfelt intention.

I can already hear the complaints about subsidies, taxes and the need for hard work, but did you know that of the $190 billion the federal government spent in 2015 to help Americans buy or rent homes, the seven million households with incomes of more than $200,000 received more than the 50+ million households with incomes of less than 50k?

The rich are getting subsidies that far exceed those of the poor.

Of course they are, they have the means to lobby for their interests. They have access to health, wealth and education to keep the status quo, or to improve it in their favor. But is a growing divide between have and have-nots what we want as a nation? What does it mean to be American? Are our fates not entwined?

British- Nigerian author Nels Abbey says,

Racism is such a tax. It’s a burden on you. It’s a financial tax, it’s an emotional tax, it’s a spiritual tax, it’s a political tax.

I lobby to dump the energetic tax of racism and to increase our wealth taxes so that we as a united America can transform the structures skewed to advantage the already advantaged.

*photo credit to Philip Montgomery

Pain and choice

Trauma causes pain, of that there is no doubt. But trauma therapist and bestselling author Resmaa Menakem says that not all pain is the same and that we get to choose what kind of pain we experience and put out into the world. He explains:

Clean pain is the pain that mends and can build capacity for growth. It’s the pain you feel when you know what to say or do and you really don’t want to say or do it, but you do it anyway, responding from the best parts of yourself. It’s also the pain you experience when you have no idea what to do; when you’re scared or worried about what might happen, and when you step forward into the unknown anyway, with honesty and vulnerability.

Dirty pain is the pain of avoidance, blame, or denial— it is experienced when you respond from your most wounded parts, become cruel or violent, or physically or emotionally run away. This response creates more pain for you and others.

This week I’ve been dealing with a hurt I caused and the backlash it created, and Resmaa’s explanation of pain has been instrumental in guiding how I work through the conflict. I have had to ask myself time and again if I want to put my energy into avoidance and defensiveness or into self-examination and making amends. I knew I would suffer either way, but sitting with the pain instead of lashing out and then owning my mistakes and apologizing instead of pointing out the other’s wrongs has allowed me to metabolize the pain as opposed to perpetuating it.

The concept of clean and dirty pain helps us to navigate personal relationships and tricky situations, but it can also be applied to the collective. In the news recently we’ve heard the POTUS say that he doesn’t want the truth of our nation’s traumatic history of slavery, policing and systemic racism taught in public education. He’s also banned diversity training for federal employees and gone as far as showing public support for racist and chauvinistic hate groups working to suppress.

He is essentially the head of a household saying to his family that what happened in the past must not be discussed, healed or amended. It must be stuffed and denied and the blame for the trauma we all feel must be placed on something outside of us. Absolutely no therapy or healing for anyone.

Modern psychology and ancient wisdom both tell us this is no way to heal and grow.

So many of us are in pain. The good news is that each of us -in so many minute decisions- gets to choose how we will respond to our emotional pain. We can be in pain while avoiding, blaming and denying, or we can be in pain while growing, opening and repairing. Our individual actions can affect the world we live in, choice by choice.

I know what I choose, and I hope that with a little Covid-induced time-out our current leader will choose the kind of pain that leads our nation to growth and reparation.

A different type of blogpost

I’ve written from a place of shame; I’ve written from a place of compassion, and I’ve written from a place of love. I don’t know that I’ve ever written from a place of anger of the sort I feel now.

I am angry at our operating system.

I am angry at the patriarchy.

I am angry at the Judeo-Christian, off-planetary, white male, asexual god.

This myth has got to burn.

Operating from this place of hierarchy and feudalism is killing our planet, and this dominant world view divides. If we’re operating with parent images, we must replace the god metaphor of king on the throne with that of the Great Earth Mother— a strong, black, beautiful and naked woman who birthed (and wants to nurture) us all. We must replace in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit with in the name of the North, the East, the South and the West. We must see and feel our connectedness. We must see that we can’t be for women and deny them the right to make decisions about their very own bodies. We must see that we can’t be pro-equal rights for some and not for others.

We cannot believe only some are the chosen people.

We must look to our historical figures with accuracy and cut the bullshit. We can walk in the way of Jesus, but we can’t distort his activism, love and self-sacrifice. And we certainly can’t use his name has a shield to protect us from the work we need to do.

We must know how powerful we are and the responsibility we have because of our power. Every word we choose and act we perform has consequences. We must act bravely and with discernment. It is absolutely okay to take breaks. It is not okay to stick our heads in the sand and pretend the lives of others are not our business, play that we are here on earth merely to consume and be entertained and distracted.

No.

We must wake up to our potential, to our power and to our duty to serve and to protect this earth and all her inhabitants. We must see that I am you and you are me. We must acknowledge both the slave and the slave master in each of us. Don’t try to tell me you don’t have slave master in you. How does the voice in your head speak? Is it kind? Compassionate? Soothing? Or does it tell you you are not good enough, that you must compete harder and perform and perfect better? Or else.

The work is inside work and it’s outside work. And it is all HARD FUCKING WORK. It will make you tired. It will make you mad and it will make you confused. I know. And I know I’m not alone. You can join me too.

Please stand up to nonsense. Please stand up for all humankind. Please don’t concern yourself with where people put their private parts, or with whom they put them. Please don’t value your property over human life. Please don’t tell me we can have differences of opinions about basic human rights like voting, healthcare and personal safety and still be friends.

No.

If you are not willing to stand up to your church or your church’s teachings, or your parents or neighbors or anyone whom you love in the name of keeping the peace, I ask you, what kind of peace do you want to keep?

Racism must become uncomfortable for all, not just for those whose skin is darker than ours. Misogyny must be uncomfortable for all, not just for those harassed. Discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation has to stop. Xenophobia must go. We are a global community whether we like it or not, which means we are all in this together.

All of us.

understanding sameness

I opened up my facebook feed this morning and was greeted with a post from someone I care about mocking the concept of wearing masks. I felt an immediate and visceral reaction to this message of ridicule. It was potent and defensive, but I wasn’t sure if it was anger or hurt.

Confused, I asked myself:

Q: Why do people wear masks?
A: To feel safe and somewhat in control, and to feel like they are protecting those around them.

Q: So, why make fun?
A: This is a defensive reaction, perhaps to a dislike or fear of being told what to do, or a simple disagreement in values and beliefs about how the world should operate.

Upon coming to these conclusions I made a comment to my husband about a person’s desire for a mask being similar to a person’s desire for a gun, both of which are related to the need to feel safe and to protect. I went on to say that one of these objects hurts no one, while the other has the potential to hurt so many. My husband began, don’t make the comparison… or some such similar statement that I really can’t remember because I immediately shut down when he started telling me what to do.

Bingo.

I was in a similarly patterned loop as my friend, who I believe to be a gun-supporter. I got defensive with my shut-down just as she had gotten defensive with her put-down.

So what is my message, my learning, in this discomfort and realization of sameness?

It’s that the universe is nudging me to continue to try to look for connections and similarities between me and the people with whom I disagree, both at home and faraway. Where I believe my husband was attempting to lead me, albeit with bossiness, was to the idea that when I engage in further divisiveness (from a place of supposed superiority) I’m not helping to create the connection and understanding I long for.

As I write, I look up and see on my 2020 vision board:

Being receptive to the view of someone we disagree with is no easy task, but when we approach the situation with a desire to understand our differences [and sameness], we get a better outcome.

I want a better outcome. As well as more joy in the process.

Thus, I commit to being receptive. I commit to observing with curiosity my reactions as well as the reactions of others experiencing my reactions. I commit to imagining how and where we might broach conversations that lead to greater understanding. I commit to increasing connectedness.

I also commit to continuing to speak, even if it my speech isn’t perfected.

Work in joyful progress.

For more shelter-in-place interpretations of my pre-Covid 2020 vision board, please visit @katietwitwrites on instagram.

the still, small voice of love

Holy shit. She’s done it again.

I sat down to prepare for a sophomore conversation call, one in which a guide from the high school meets with my husband, myself and our soon-to-be a Junior son to reflect upon the first half of high school and make goals for the second half. I, of course, had my journal in one hand and a list of questions to contemplate in the other. My son, lounging in front of the TV, had his phone in one hand and a video game controller in the other. I sighed, let him be, and picked up my dinging phone alerting me that new grades had been posted. I don’t always click, but it being so close to the end of the semester and minutes before the reflection call, I did. It wasn’t the course grades that caught my attention, it was the “effort grades”.

B effort!

That lit me up. We’d been home for 8 weeks and school has pretty much been his only obligation! I immediately blasted out a text to him saying that I was feeling disgusted and that I’d prefer lower course grades and A effort to this average display of attention. I followed that up with a tattle call to my husband. It wasn’t until I was in the middle of texting a friend to ask if was I being/expecting too much that I snapped back into real time and space and admitted to myself that I had the answers within, and the yuckiness I was feeling and wanting to discharge was in direct relation to the real conflict at hand: the pressure I was putting on him was the same pressure I’ve been trying so desperately to shake off myself. I was literally planting the same voice in his head that I’ve been trying my damnedest to quiet.

Do more!

Do better!

Prove yourself!

I deleted the text and opened the zoom call. Our talented guide started our conversation with this poem-prayer by Henri Nouwen:

Many voices ask for our attention. There is a voice that says, “Prove that you are a good person.” Another voice says, “You’d better be ashamed of yourself.” There also is a voice that says, “Nobody really cares about you,” and one that says, “Be sure to become successful, popular, and powerful.” But underneath all these often very noisy voices is a still, small voice that says, “You are my Beloved, my favor rests on you.” That’s the voice we need most of all to hear. To hear that voice, however, requires special effort; it requires solitude, silence, and a strong determination to listen.

I really appreciate when the universe puts me in my place so quickly and decisively with her magic ways. (I hear you!) And I recommit myself to solitude, silence and a strong determination to listen — to both gentle and not-so-gentle reminders (this one was gentle, thank you) and to my kids when I pause long enough to ask them questions of the “are you okay with this feedback?” sort.

What is

My husband and babe #1 travelled to NYC for a basketball tournament that was graciously cancelled mid-game. Thank you NBA and NCAA for being the first leaders of our nation. For saying, we will stop the March madness and we will respond to what is. Thank you for setting a precedent for our president.

My people are back from this hot-zone, and now we are stuck at home together. We made this decision before the CDC advised it.

Some call it social distancing. Some call it physical distancing. I call it a dream come true.

How long has my soul begged for this kind of closeness with my family? The kind not required by a logistically complicated scheduled trip away from all of our duties and distractions, but rather a settling in, a sinking down, a surrender to our humanness. A call to close loops and finish discussions, to not escape to school or work mid-complicated sentence. To not try to fit in familial relationships among all the external obligations. And the world is asking us to do it.

I feel an ancient itch being scratched, an echoey yearning for tribe time, a longing for community collaboration and solidarity, as we relearn together how to work with the natural elements.

Yes, I feel fear. And panic has reached the surface of my body a time or two. But truthfully the undercurrent of fear has been here inside me for so many years. Fear for the earth, fear for the polar bears, fear for the people in poverty living near the sea. Fear for the glaciers and the grandkids, the forests and the furry ones. Fear for all the things we know and don’t address.

I can feel Mother Earth sighing in relief for the little break we’re giving her, and now I don’t feel quite so alone in my fear.

Now maybe we all look at the invisible elephant in the room. Now maybe we talk about the necessity of universal healthcare, of community gardens and converting our tidy blue-grass yards into life-giving earth. Maybe we address how every action we take as individuals ripples through the community, affecting all.

Maybe we embrace our interconnectedness as demonstrated by the constantly-updating live outbreak maps. Maybe we acknowledge as a culture the inevitable end we all face. Maybe with this acknowledgment we choose to live in more life-conscious ways.

I pray and I choose to believe that this virus can raise our consciousness and our health as a vibrant community. All of us have unique ways of contributing and growing, all of us have work to do at home— both inner work and work with our closest people. For all those who continue to do important and life-saving work out in the community: providing food and medicine, caring for the sick and assisting the compromised and the elderly, —thank you. From the bottom of my heart.

a solstice celebration

I was listening to a friend this morning as she tried to find the word to describe how she felt about my family’s willingness to participate in our annual Winter Solstice celebration. It wasn’t jealousy, she said, because she was really happy for us, but maybe there was a bit of envy there because she couldn’t imagine even asking her husband to play in such present, reflective and non-traditional ways.

I realize I’m really lucky. I also realize and celebrate how hard I’ve worked to create this reality, as my family’s openness and my willingness to ask for what I wanted wasn’t always the case.

I travel back in time, not to a prior Solstice, but closer to Spring Equinox, to Easter morning a big handful of years back. We had plans with extended family that afternoon, but I was really craving some quality nuclear family time before we headed out. I did my typical thing, polling each member of the family as to what they’d like to do. Answers varied from play with my Easter Bunny toys to watch TV. If we’d have been a more religious family, we’d at least had time sitting together in the pew of a church, but we didn’t have that glue. I tried to rally my husband for support. I tried cajoling my kids with the promise of maple syrup if we could all just dress and get to a restaurant for brunch. I was met with resistance from every side.

I resigned myself to a typical Sunday morning routine with everyone doing their own thing at home. Bitterly, and full of self-pity I transferred the clean clothes from the washer to the dryer pushed the door shut. The latch didn’t catch, and it swung open. Not even aware of my mounting loneliness, hurt and rage, I kicked the door with my foot. It felt so good. I kicked it again, this time harder. It felt even better. One more time I stretched my bent knee back to get ample torque and let my bare foot fly. With all the commotion I was making, I’d roused curiosity and the stomping and pitter-patter of nearing footsteps could be heard. I was bawling at this point. The dryer was left in a V-shape and could only later be closed with three big strands of duck tape. The kids were staring at me in horror.

What was WRONG with me my husband asked?

At the time, I hadn’t a clue, but with a whole lot of reflection (and paid therapeutic support) my situation became clearer to me. Nothing was wrong with me, but I wasn’t living a life in alignment with my values of connection, spirituality and quality family time, and I didn’t yet have the vision or skills to create it. I didn’t believe I deserved or had the power to create the rich family-life I wanted. And perhaps most crucially, I hadn’t the voice and confidence to express to my life-partner what I wanted to create.

My therapist helped me to see that if I wanted my life to be different than the one in which I was currently experiencing, then I needed to behave differently, either by creating powerful moments for connection on my own or by sharing explicitly with my husband what I wanted for our family and clearly making requests for us to do it together. It wasn’t fair to anyone if I was being ambiguous or passive-aggressive. She was my cheerleader, encouraging me in good ol’ Mary Oliver fashion to fight for the precious life I wanted to live, encouraging me to live boldly and deliberately. I was scared out of my mind. What if I asked in no uncertain terms for the kind of quality time and support I wanted and got denied? What if I shared with my spouse the life I wanted to build and he wasn’t on board?

Then you have very valuable information, she explained.

Gulp.

Flash forward through piles of journals.
Flash forward through loads of e-mailed attempts at conversation.
Flash forward through the awkward and jerky starts and stops of novice face-to-face, all-masks-off conversation.
Flash forward to participation in a Mindful Communications course and role playing with a classmate over the phone.
Flash forward to prayer and practice and failures and start-overs and redos and apologies and self-inflicted time-outs.
Flash forward to the important learning that I will be just fine should I have to create the life I want to live on my own.
Flash forward through the tearful and snot-filled vulnerability of meaningful, transparent and difficult heart-to-heart conversation.
Flash forward to now.

Now I can share confidently with all my men:

Guys, I love you so much. Nothing means more to me than to create really rich and meaningful experiences. This year for our annual Solstice celebration I have invited someone I really respect to do some soul work with us before the sun sets. You need to be home with an open mind and ready for action by 2:00. And because our time sleeping together in one room playing “olden days” means so much to me, I’ll pay anyone who makes it all the way until sunrise $20. Lastly, please come to our gathering with an activity, game or conversation starter to share.

And guess what.

When we were tucking ourselves in for the night and one of the boys asked, is it just me or has mom gotten her way all day? my incredibility supportive and very handsome husband replied yes, and that’s okay.

Life is hard

This morning at Reading Circle we will conclude our discussion of Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In this autobiography of her youth, Maya delivers wisdom niblet after wisdom niblet. The kind of wisdom only gleaned by a young mind with keen observation skills. With poetic clarity she reminds readers again and again what it’s like to navigate the world with only so many years’ experience to draw upon. She paints a vivid picture of the world as she interpreted it as a child, and she does so with such brilliance, insight, poetry and humor that I practically have the entire book underlined.

In the final chapter she describes her mother’s compassionate understanding and ability to allow her baby to struggle and work for what she wants — to become the first black streetcar conductor in San Francisco. Maya explains that Mother understood the perversity of life.

Mother understood, and more importantly, she allowed Maya to discover it too— in her own time and her own way. The comfort with discomfort that Mother displayed (both her own discomfort and that of others) demonstrates her intimate relationship with struggle and hardship as well as her faith in her daughter’s ability to navigate the complex world. Maya learned not to sugar coat life’s hardships, nor succumb to any victimhood thinking.

Unlike Maya, I didn’t grow up black in a world made for whites, nor did I grow up in an age pre-civil and pre-women’s rights. Instead, I grew up a member of the majority in the comfortable suburbs of a small town, in the age of Baby Sitters Club books and the Brady Bunch. I grew up with the Huxtables, the Sievers and the Cleavers. I grew up thinking that all of life’s difficulties could be sorted out in a hundred pages or a half an hour. I grew up thinking that the struggling that comes with being human was an option, and I was failing miserably. I spent my time not observing the people and situations around me like Maya, but instead studying the habits and social norms of actors on television or cookie-cutter characters in children’s books. And I tried my damnedest to emulate perfection. Is it any wonder that I thought there was something inherently wrong with me and my family? We were nothing like what I saw on the tube.

My grown-up attraction to Maya’s tell-it-like-it-is honesty and vulnerability touches the same sweet spot that lit up three years ago at my first appointment with my hairdresser. I can’t remember how I responded to her greeting and “how are you?”, but whatever I said set her off to clucking and repeating,

Life is hard. Oh, life is hard. Honey, life is hard!

No one had ever said that to me before, and in the matter of a moment I felt like I’d landed in a lap I’d always wanted to inhabit. I felt understood. I felt the presence of a truth speaker. I felt connection and the openness that comes with honesty and accepting struggle. With not pretending to have my shit together. There was no judgement of the “you should just be grateful sort”. There was no advice. There was no rescue. Just solidarity. I recall this moment as one of the prominent notches in my personal timeline. I see it as a shifting point for how I want to view the world hard and inhabit spaces.

Like Maya, her mother and my hairdresser, I want to acknowledge that life is hard (maybe the Buddha said something along these lines too?). Like them, I want to offer compassionate empathy while not distracting from or pretending the pain is not there. Most importantly, as Maya demonstrates page after page, no matter how hard life is, it’s also magical and painstakingly beautiful if you’re paying attention, and as humans, we can do hard things.

Gentle metrics of success

Almost five years ago I was asked to define my gentle metrics of success. This was novel to me and an impetus for the personal growth I’ve experienced since then.

This metrics was not to include numbers; no salary, 401k, 529 accounts or any of the normal western world stamps of success like home ownership or leaving a little something behind for the kids, but rather was to approach success from an end-of-life sort of view.

What makes my life successful? How do I know I’ve “made it”?

As I created this metrics, clarity poked her head up out of the depths of fog, pointing me in the direction of my North Star. Most of the items on my list were sensual. None required a fat bank account or proving my worthiness:

A body that is capable of moving, touching and loving,
soft clothing, a warm home, beautiful spaces and textures,
natural and nourishing food from the earth,
deep conversation, social connections and community,
presence in nature with her feels, sights and sounds,
music that moves,
scents that invoke and inspire,
the ability to travel and participate in lens-expanding experiences,
time to reflect and integrate,
the energy to create.

I noticed that a lot of these items on the gentle metrics had to do with pleasure. Growing up with the hard-work ethic of the midwest, smack in the middle of a country settled by puritans, pleasure wasn’t something that was brought up much, nor was the body. In fact, all these “luxuries” that made up my gentle metrics were ideals I held as superfluous, extra, or special treats, as opposed to a way to live.

Work, strive, suffer and save was the unconscious operating model I was using, something I had picked up without noticing along the way. I was living a life of numbers. Slave to the to-do list, clock and mile marker and prone to adding one more class to my schedule or dropping one more penny into the piggy bank.

I can pinpoint this request as a serious pivot-point in my life, leading me to ask such questions as:

Why do I work?
What am I working for?
How do I spend my time?
Who do I want to spend my time with?
Where do I spend my time and how do I leave the spaces I inhabit?

I am so grateful to the wisdom teacher who offered this life-enriching question. I am grateful for recognizing my values and transforming my pace and way of being in the world.

I write this blog to remind myself of both my values and my success, as I still occasionally slip into “am I doing enough, earning enough, offering enough” mentality.

I share this blog to pay it forward. What is your gentle metrics of success?

With humble humanness,

Katie

October play

The end of October is almost here, and I haven’t written a thing to share. Not because nothing is noteworthy, but rather because what I’ve been wanting to write seems a tad too intimate and vulnerable and a tad too woo-woo. But the truth is, this is my favorite October on record. Anxiety still rears its head, and the threat of depression looms like it often does in this tenth month of the year, but this particular October the leaves are extra vibrant and the light more sparkly than I remember. Part of the October magic is due to the perfect climate conditions for color, but part I credit to the playful work I’ve been doing. Three times this week I saw some iteration of

what you did yesterday created today;
what you do today creates tomorrow.

I’d like to think that my actions and self-care rituals over the last few months are playing out now, one of which is setting intentions with the moon.

Super witchy, no?

With the new moon I set intentions for habits I want to cultivate and parts of my personality I want to grow as the moon grows big and fat into fullness.

With the full moon I set intentions for habits I want to drop and thinking patterns and grudges I want to release as the moon shrinks to invisible.

Each day I return to these intentions, and standing in front of the altar I build each fortnight, I light a candle and some incense and read the intentions aloud. Every. Single. Day.

How’s that for some magic?

Being so in tune with my intentions, I can’t help but be more aware of my behaviors and how I create my own reality with the words I choose, the company I keep and the actions I take. Decisions become easier and relationships cleaner.

Being so in tune to the moon, I can’t help but be more aware of my cycle and how my moods and energy levels change with the changing shape of this celestial tracker. Checking in with her on the pre-dawn and pitch black drive to middle school, I feel connection to (and participation with) Mother Nature like I never have before.

Being so in tune with Mother Nature, I can’t help but feel supported as the seasons change. The days are shortening furiously fast, and this year, instead of feeling the dread of winter so solidly, I am finding twinges of excitement in the cracks. I am grateful for the way the sun shifts and the light shimmers through the quivering leaves onto different spots in the house and yard like twinkle lights.

Being so in tune with the light, I can’t help but be drawn closer to the sun-based celebrations. We began celebrating the Winter Solstice at home years ago, as a call for more meaning and connection with the Earth, but this year Samhain (Sa-wen) is on my radar too, the half-way mark between the Fall Equinox and Winter Solstice. Like its cousins Halloween, All Saints’ Day and Day of the Dead, Samhain is marked by thinning veils between the land of the living and of those passed, between this reality and those unseen. It’s the season of imagination, divination and magic, the season of celebrating light and dark and the season of co-creating the reality in which we live.

All of this in-tune-ment, intentional attention and Mother Earth support is providing a sense peace that I didn’t know could co-exist with a racing heart, sweaty palms or a deep longing to spend the day in bed. I think the play with the moon and my intentions is helping me to understand the cyclical nature of all things a bit more tangibly. The light grows bright, it goes dim. Feelings arise, (and if I don’t mess with them too much) there they go. And if I focus my intention on my desires often enough, I just may create the playful world I want to inhabit.

Happy magic-making to you.

Boo!