.control :: comfort.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of “home” what it means, what it represents, what it fulfills within us. Home can be a place of deep belonging, ownership, comfort, ritual, knowledge...a place to grow deeper in the way of a long slow practice.

I’ve been frustrated in my new city. It feels hard here. It feels like door are closed and I kept knocking and knocking and I’m tired of knocking. I start feeling frustrated with this place. I start questioning being here because if I’m meant to be here would things open up...wouldn’t opportunity find me? I started to feel like this must be a sign I need to pay attention to! 

This isn’t a new feeling for me. I feel this at some point everywhere I go and live. So on top of feeling like everything is hard here I started to react to the fact that I’m right here again. In the cycle I am trying to change. I came here to change it and it found me, again. 

A few days ago when I was feeling super frustrated I drove out to my favorite place, the arboretum. It’s a magical lush land right on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I walked along my favorites trails and began recognizing my frustration during this time coming out in forms of trying to control my environment. I started to gain awareness that my frustration is really discomfort of the unknown. The ambiguity and instability that surrounds all aspects of me right now makes me yearn for control. So I began to think about home and this desire to have a home to be home. Whatever that means.... I started to wonder if this idea of home is really an interconnected relationship between comfort and control?

Why do we find comfort in home?
Is the comfort found in the control of knowing? 
What is home? 
How do we define home? 
A specific place? 
A landscape? 
A person? 
A feeling?

I mentioned meeting Barbara the Buddhist on a flight a few months ago and when we were talking about “home” we were referring to the West in that conversation. As we were beginning to land she said "when I look out at Asheville it isn’t home but when I see my Husband then I’ll be home". So she’s referring to a “home” landscape and a person. 

How do you define home?

I’m just starting to peel away the layers of this expansive thought. I see the deep potential to learn here, in this place of unknown landscapes and culture. Amongst all this frustration I’m able to see this as an opportunity for deep practice in self-awareness and understanding my tendencies. I’m grateful. 

.tiny moments of pleasure.

A childhood friend is driving from our hometown in Central Washington back to her home in Chicago this week. She passed thru Idaho last night and we met up for dinner. It was so lovely to catch up in that deep unspoken way that comes from having a childhood in the same place. She brought me a huge bag of fresh picked bing cherries from her family's orchard. A true summer treat!! Today was so so so hot, I made myself a fresh cherry milkshake and had a flash memory of my sweet Nana several years ago in her later stages of dementia. She wouldn't really eat except for fresh cherry shakes and french fries, those were her favorites. One hot summer day my mom and I drove her out to her favorite fruit stand with the best fresh cherry shakes in town. We sat down in the shaded picnic area and I was talking to my mom when I heard a loud slurping noise and looked up to see that noise was coming from my sweet southern belle Nana. I thought of that today with my shake and realized how even as she was fading from us and herself she still had those sweet tiny moments of pleasure.

Life is so unexpected and impermanent - we aren't granted anything, just tiny moments connected together - some are ecstatic, some are warming, some are exciting, some are challenging, some are bittersweet, some are shattering and some make our hearts expand bigger and wide than ever imagined.

This memory reminded me to continue to seek these tiny sweet moments of pleasure in my life. I hope so dearly that you are finding tiny moments of pleasure in your life.

.silence.

I went to a book reading last night with Emily Ruschvich, a Idaho native and rural life enthusiast. She said she's always lived in small places and with that also loves rural literature. The moderator asked why she loved rural literature so much? She said "it shows the essence of us - rural life shows our humanness in our most quiet moments." I loved that. I fell in love with her passion and connection to the land here. I envy that connect to a place. She reminded me of the richness and depth of exploration that comes from the slow quiet of rural life.

I remember that silence.

It reminded me of those long hot afternoons living in that big house on the hill in Southern Malawi. The view from the front porch looking over the red valley below and the electric red/fuschia sunsets during burn season. The days with no work and no power. How they felt so long at first and then slowly over time turned into sweet delights. It was time and space to explore and create, a new fruit to experiment baking with or new supplies found on a trip into the city to make into jewelry.

One time, on a trip to the "big" city I found rope at the paper store and learned how to dye the cotton with found spices at indian stores and then wove it into a big necklace on one of those afternoons, just sitting on the front steps looking out at the guava trees and the clay lands while the boys (I lived with a family with two boys - Promise, 7 years old and Osborne, 5 years old they became my local guides, shadows, friends and food tasters.) played soccer with a ball made out of burnt plastic bags. Another afternoon I noticed the guava trees, so heavy and ripe with fruits and with a whole afternoon infront of us I decided we were going to make a guava crisp. I explained the mission to the boys, they had NO clue what a crisp was but with the brief mention of sugar (a rare treat) they were off leaping at the trees to help collect guavas. Within minutes Promise and Osborne were back with enough guavas for 10 crisps! As I gathered the ingredients and they worked on eating the leftover guavas. I went to the cookhouse to start the fire but  realized I forgot a towel to grab the pan and headed back to the house. As I rounded to the front of the house I had a strange feeling - something was different. I slowed down and looked around and before I knew it Promised and Osborne were sneaking up behind me whispering "Arish, baboooooon baboooooon" and there in the small grove of guave trees was at least 15 baboons in the trees scooping the fruit off the branches and into their mouths.  The world felt silent and full and magical for a moment - then Promise being 7 couldn't help himself and was worried they wouldn't leave any fruit so started running towards the trees and in a flash they were all gone - like it never happened.

It's been hard to sink into the silence of HERE. I ached for silence in Somerville but now that I am in a place of wide spaces and deep silence I am realizing how much in 3 years I acclimated to my home there.

.what is the Universe whispering to you.

My sister was telling me about an article today that was titled, what is the Universe whispering to you? Tonight I went on a walk into the trees as dusk was setting in. I started the walk quickly - moving forcefully as if trying to free myself from something. Then the question came back to me, what is the Universe whispering to you? I started to walk slower to listen to the soft stream below - the gentle chirps of distant birds and felt the awareness of the air getting damper and colder - the autumn night settle in and then I heard: 

Be true to myself

Root myself

Love myself fiercely

Live slower

More being less doing

I kept walking into the darkness and repeated what I had heard a few times. I started to see the truth and also the pattern that when I start to find myself uprooting I find myself reacting which leads to doing more than being which leads to being more uprooted. 

So grateful for those tiny whispers and the clarity that always comes from a walk in the forest.

What is the Universe whispering to you? 

.westward, again.

I landed on the west coast, again yesterday. The past few months have seemed like a blur of plane rides and beds and places and 5 outfits (ha!) and I have only just started to find a rhythm (or the beginning of a surrender) to all this transition. I'm back in my home state of Washington for a few weeks while I share space with my sister who is awaiting the arrival for her first baby. 

The past month has felt frustrating. I felt like I was waiting on people to tell me what to do or where to go or how to spend my time and then I realized I was frustrated because I wasn't making any decisions for myself. I was projecting that frustration of not choosing myself upon others. Realizing this perspective totally changed things for me about 2 weeks ago. I started to actively choose myself by making small tiny decisions. The small tiny decisions started to open up new and old joys in my life, my journey. I started running into and reconnecting with old friends and found that beautiful excitement in the studio that I haven't had for such long time. I met with a friend I hadn't seen in months for coffee and our creativity talk inspired me to keep showing up for jewelry to find my discipline to my craft again. To invest time in it no matter what the inspiration or motivation (or lack of!). A few days later I found a new opportunity for myself in December! Yesterday I left Boston at 6am feeling groggy and a little unsettled at all the things I could've done before I left for Washington but as I sat in the window seat of the plane and watched the magic of the changing landscapes pass me by I couldn't help but feel so grateful to have this moment - this view - this freedom. 

I read this poem (one of my favorite poems) on the On Being blog this morning and was grateful for this gift of this reminder - thankful for all the small gifts that are right in front of me all the time.

"The Journey”
by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations —
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life you could save.

.the colors of the prairie.

I'm back on the east coast for a few weeks before I head west again. My time in Chicago flew by - lost in the studio - in stillness. It wasn't the trip I thought it would be it allowed the slowness - space - silence that I needed for opening up for what will come next. One of my last days in Chicago I took a studio break and drove north to a prairie grove.

Lately, I have really wanted a house - a place of my own - a sanctuary. I want to stay in a place and learn all it's details and secrets. Despite my want it just isn't the time. I'm living out of my backpack and will be for a little while. I walked alone through the prairie grove in the buzzing chorus of crickets and the rustling grasses and realized what a honor it is to be there and see the colors of fall in the prairie. To have seen so many seasons in so many places. It's time to stop waiting or dreaming or yearning for something that isn't here. It's time to find gratitude in the stillness and truth of what I have right now. To accept it's enough and it's what I need.

Oh the beautiful colors of the prairie!!!

I've been reading The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo everyday (so good!!) and something from yesterday's entry really spoke to me, it said "only rarely have I let go completely, yet those moment of total surrender have throughly changed my life." "When lonely and afraid to reach out, I have somehow collapsed repeatedly into the ocean of another's love, and it cleansed my weary heart." I found those words to hold such a beautiful vulnerability, to "collapse repeatedly into the ocean of another's love" I thought about how rare it is for me let go enough to collapse into another's love.

I started thinking about why I keep it all in.
I started thinking about all the things I've learned - absorbed!
The quietness that I have claimed - the weakness - the obedience - the fear.

I realized that in order to collapse into the ocean of another's love I have to choose myself! I have to  start saying I know what is best - that I know what I need - that I deserve all the goodness that is before me.  TO CHOOSE myself! TO RESIDE inside myself with a deep rootedness. TO STOP choosing fear.

I went to Walden Pond yesterday and swan and read and sunbathed and then walked around the pond. I've been going on walks lately trying to pay attention more - observe/absorb. Every time I find so much beauty in the decaying tress - the gaping bark - the hollow trunks - to see the cycle of life/death/regeneration/repurpose - the flow of life in such a tangible way.

.cape cod.

“Follow your intuitive insightfulness! Heed its subtlest intimations, even if you can’t put them into words. Direct insights happen without words. It is a mistake to believe that only what is expressible can really be true. The Truth exists beyond all expressions.vThe Mystery all around us is so ungraspable that our limited concepts can only point at it. Now trust your most delicate feelings. They speak to you more clearly than any words.”

~Gayan Silvie Winter and Jo Dose

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There's nothing that makes me feel more summer than sunbathing next to a body of water. I grew up going to a lake so going to water IS summer. Last summer, my first summer in New England I went to the Cape with my sister and totally fell in love with the ocean - the dunes - the cape. It's such a powerful feeling just looking out onto the flat horizon before me and the towering dunes behind me. It's a magical place for me that fills me up. 

Do you have a place you go that feels like summer to you? 

Do you have a place that recharges your spirit? 

Where is it?

It was hard to come back to the loud busy city. We came back late Sunday night taking our time exploring the backroads of the small towns of the upper cape, eating as much seafood as we could handle and a little more with salty hair and dry sandy skin. There's such a freedom I find in summer. 

So grateful for the beach - the ocean - the waves - the summer - the inspiration.

.lately.

It's been a long time since I've put anything here. 

I've been searching inside of myself - trying to find the grounding of what I want/need. 

I've been distracting myself with the busy life of Boston - chasing opportunities. 

I've been trying to be more present in the moment - meeting new people, staying up too late dancing to Brazilian music and making things with new mediums.

I took a trip to the Smokey Mountains and feel in love the lush mountains (again), the pitch dark nights and the quiet mornings. 

I need nature - I need space - I need the calmness to process it all. 

I took a trip to the ocean and feel in love with the mysterious life of tide pools, the way the horizon loses it's depth when you look long enough and the way the crashing waves somehow give me answers. 

I need to explore - I need to be silent (sometimes) - I need to s l o w down.

I'm reading a new book about energy and healing, "Light, Emerging" and I read the words this morning, 

"What is it that I have longed for and not yet succeeded in creating in my life?"

What are you longing for? What do you desire? What are you holding back? I hope you say YES this week. I hope you slow down. I hope you find love and beauty in it all.

.f u l l moon in cancer.

“This Full Moon is in close proximity to the winter/summer solstice. Cancer takes you deep inside of Self. Cancer seeks to create a sense of home and family. The experience of nourishing bonds…”

“When you cultivate your inner life. Your Inner Being. Your soul light increases and radiates out to nurture others. This is real beauty. You ultimately realize that home is inside of you. It is the light of your own heart."

mysticmamma

It was 63 degrees here today. It was like a spring day. I went for a long bike ride in a t-shirt!! Bike rides always help me clear my mind - ground myself. I realized I am ready to let go of a lot of things that I held onto in 2015 and to open myself up more - to love more - to be more vulnerable - to be true to myself - to align my energies with my purpose - to refocus my purpose. 

Did you feel this emotional full moon? What came up for you?

.old stories.

What happens when you realize that the story you've been telling yourself for so long isn't true - that you've been telling it all wrong? What if we can only truly find our greatest freedom deep down in the darkness of loss?

I've felt abandoned in many ways but when I step back for the bigger picture - an authentic picture - I can see/know that I had to be abandoned to be able to get here. 

I would've never found my self - 

my fulfillment - 
my truths sitting there. 

I chase the light and watch my reflection change, 
that's where I find my self - 
my fulfillment - 
my greatest (most honest) truths. 

It's taken me years to see the immense beauty of my journey and I think I'm only beginning to grasp it. A month from today it will be 2016. A month from today I will be embarking on a new adventure. I ready to tell a new story.

Are you telling old stories that no longer serve you? What will your new story be?

.silent truths.

There are quiet random moments thay remind me I have been stripped of everything - this has been my greatest gift and greatest challenge. And then I heard myself say:

Dive into yourself and see what you discover. 
Stop saying sorry. 
Be kind to yourself and to other but don't give away yourself. 
Take jumps off of cliffs but also sit alone in the forest. 
Let the sun warm your soul but be brave to truly feel the bitter cold. 
Love freely - openly, don't rely on your selfish heart - find a path to that deep well of love that never judges or runs dry. Find the deepest love and gratitude for yourself and be honored at any love that comes from outside - without expectations. 

Find peace in impermanence. 
Find forgiveness in impermanence. 
Find roots in impermanence.

.energy.

This moon brought new energies and new perspectives on old thoughts. I'm just sitting with them right now - wondering if it's time for change - wondering it it's time to let go - knowing another transition is here. 

I started thinking about being at the birth center - I haven't thought about births, appointments or 24 hours rotations in a long time. I'm not even sure why I'm thinking about it. I went to the studio because it always clears my energy. I spent Tuesday and Wednesday in the studio. I lost track of time and forgot to eat. It's still there. That energy that feeds me. That energy that cleanses my spirit. I'm so grateful for my art to have access to a source that realigns me. 

What's your energy source? What washes over your soul? What fills you up when other things are changing? 

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My friend is taking photographs of my jewels today for a new online store that's in the works for the holiday shopping season. SO excited to share it with you all soon.

.where I'm from.

A few weeks ago I went back to Washington, my home state for a few days for a dear friends' wedding after a year and that was only for 2 days so it's really been 2 years since I have spent a good amount of time in Washington. I was excited to see what it felt like to be in Washington. What would the year on the East Coast feel like - would I feel/see the difference in my reflection against the PNW background?

I did. It felt different. It felt quiet. There was a solitude, which felt big and a little lonely to my east coast layers. Then we went for a hike up castle rock and there it was - that feeling - that energy - that belonging. If there's anything that reminds me of where I am from it's those desert hues of the sage foothills. Maybe it's not my home but those are the hills that raised me - the hills that taught me to feel inspirations - the hills that calm me - the hills I use to whisper my secrets to - the hills that fill my soul with the urge to create - those hills are my cleansing ocean wave in the the arid inland terrain.

What gives you that urge? Overflows your soul? Energizes your whole being? Where do you find that? I'd love to hear!!