These Venerable Woods

The crows’ caw at dawn drags me from my half awake haze. Just five more minutes, I whisper. As if on cue, their anisodactyl feet begin an impatient march across the roof while they wait for peanuts. 

The morning air is thick with humidity, cicadas drone from every unseen nook and cranny in these venerable woods. At night the tree frogs, crickets and katydids take the baton in this never ending symphony. Unmannered raccoons crashed the bird feeders overnight, tossing everything like a SWAT team raid on a drug kingpin’s den. Squirrels got nothin’ on raccoons. 

The wildlife here is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before in my own backyard—barred owls, a great horned owl, sharp-shinned hawks, red tailed hawks, a cormorant that shouldn’t even BE here, deer, horses, possums, raccoons, rabbits, bats, turtles, and recently, a four and a half foot rat snake that nearly gave me a heart attack when the dog found it and wanted to play. 

There’s a wildness here that walks the line of supernatural. There is a definite vibe after dark. You can hear it, feel it, sense it. Nature speaks differently here, she’s…persistent, so you must show your respect. She’s sharing her secrets with you, but she’s also watching. Life has new meaning here. 

The forest is alive, her song constant, yet ever changing. 

Mending What is Broken

I’m a feral child of cut off shorts, skinned knees and barefoot summers, of afternoons wading knee deep in icy cold creeks winding through backyard suburban forests, of doing backflips on the trampoline until my head hurt and then sunning myself like a reptile on the warmth of that black nylon, staring up through a canopy of gently swaying trees, dreaming of a boy, and what his lips might feel like pressed against mine. 

That feral girl still lives under my skin. She stands with me on Ostara watching winter’s last breath blow mighty, gusty winds through the trees. She feels every buffet and tendril of white hair that whips around my aging crown. I feel her childlike wonder of the world around me. We feel One with all that is. This is our happy place, where we feel seen, and free, and loved beyond all comprehension. Where lifelong traumas and wounds no longer exist. There is only our feet on the ground and the wind against our skin. In these moments, we mend what is broken. 

I live for windy days. 

Observance and Contemplation

Coyotes yip and howl just beyond the tree line beside the house. They are close. We all pause to listen—the dog's ears attentively perked. The sound is haunting, primal and oddly comforting somehow. Is it a territorial display, a role call or are they simply bonding in the waning light of the most recent full moon? They've been there the last two nights, so probably not celebrating downed prey—at least I hope not, there are a lot of cats around here. 

We're in a new house, surrounded on two sides by woods filled with pine trees, Leland Cyprus, redbuds, thorny locusts, Chinese privet, two huge Bradford pear trees in the back yard and a horse pasture that can be seen through the trees in the back. It is literally a little slice of heaven on earth, well, for me anyway. All this nature is a serotonin goldmine. 

A possum living in an abandoned squirrel's nest in a tree right on the fence line, peers its little face over the edge, and watches me quizzically one morning just before the sunrise. I am smitten. The corner of my eye catches movement in the trees at dusk—a spooked great horned owl just as it spreads its giant wings, silently, and lands nearby. Her, hoo-h'HOO-hoo-hoo confirming it wasn't a specter. Horses whinny in the distant pasture, sometimes I catch a glimpse of them through the break in the trees, chestnut beauties with dark brown manes. Their tails flick side to side as they amble lazily in the sublime light of golden hour. 

There are squirrels, blue jays, cardinals, sparrows, downy woodpeckers, northern flickers, bees, bats, dragonflies...and the coyotes. This place might heal me in ways I didn't know I needed healing. The energy here is quite perfect, and I am steeped in gratitude and thoughtful contemplation of what is possible. Life is so good.          

Healing Generational Trauma

Everybody here’s got a story to tell
Everybody’s been through their own hell
There’s nothing too special about getting hurt
But getting over it, that takes the work
-Duck and Cover, Song by Glen Phillips 2005

No one knows your trauma, not fully. Only you. And your tribe beyond the veil. Are you healing ancestral wounds, passed down from generations long forgotten? There’s unimaginable pain and suffering stored and stacked neatly in your double helix, waiting to be released to the Light—OR are you going to push your trauma down and keep piling onto that ancient stack, ignoring it, burying it deep, passing it on down the generational line? 

Some of us are called to task, we’re branded ‘Black Sheep’ of the family. We’re weirdo’s, troublemakers, outsiders, misfits. But we’re also intuitive, passionate, truth seeking bad asses. We feel our ancestors in our bones, hear their cries in our restless slumber, wear their strength on our weathered faces. Shadow work can make you mad. But that madness burns like underbrush, clearing the way for something beautiful to grow. 

Life is precious. Take nothing for granted. I hope you are well. And happy, wherever you are. 

#dna #generationaltrauma #generationalhealing #blacksheep #shadowwork #gratitudedaily #presentmomentliving

Standing Rapt in Awe

Recently, I was standing in the backyard bidding the day adieu, watching hues of soft pink and creamsicle orange take over the warm blue sky. I heard them before I saw them, a noisy chattering of starlings. They flew in low and fast, directly above my head, landing in a mostly bare red maple at the edge of my fence. The glorious cacophony of their impromptu gathering left me breathless. In all the years lived here, practicing my ritual of saying goodnight to Mother Earth, never had I experienced starlings, quite literally, at my back door. 

I held my breath, watching them, listening to them speak in language known only to them. They were still, yet aflutter, their collective energy an invisible and palpable force moving through the stark limbs of that red maple like a wave. To most people this moment would just appear to be birds in a tree and go largely unnoticed. To me, this was poetry, this was a gift from the Universe, this was a moment to savor, a moment to etch into the deepest part of my hippocampus to recall when my eyesight, and the rest of me, someday, begins to fade.

Maybe I romanticize these seemingly mundane moments too much, but I don't care. Living in the present moment and being grateful for every opportunity to fully experience and embrace this temporary, temporal existence has changed my life in every way for the better. Perhaps Einstein said it best...

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed."

In the milliseconds before those starlings vacated that red maple it was quiet and calm, and then in unison, like a shot, they ascended back into the twilight sky, their noisy chattering fading into the distance like the setting sun.

  

Soul Food

Zoysia shouldn't still be green and thriving mid-November, and yet, I will have to mow the lawn soon. Honey bees and bright yellow, cloudless sulphur butterflies frolic on an island of dandelions that have claimed their territory amid the limited expanse of the backyard—falling leaves a juxtaposition. Clouds overhead, dollops of bright white and stormy grey, fight for dominance after a long rainy night. Gusting winds riding the tail end of that front, share the promise of cooler days with each exhale of its breath. The waxing full moon will rise later and cover the night in the softness of her glow. Nocturnal creatures will awaken from their hovels and scour the landscape for sustenance to sustain them for a winter that is running behind schedule, and they are grateful for the reprieve.

Observations made in a moment of standing in stillness, in silence, in reverence of the beauty and poetry of this miraculous world in which we are living is my soul food and every day, I feast.

Vibrate higher. 

       

Gratitude is a Magnet that Attracts Abundance

Abundance beings with gratitude. This is not some hippie dippy new age philosophy, this is a Universal Truth that I have experienced first hand, and life is good. Gratitude begins with being fully aware in this eternal present moment, it begins with honoring and appreciating the little things—dandelions in the spring and happy bees that hasten to pollinate them, standing barefoot on a patch of warm summer sod, tiny delicate purple asters growing wild in the front yard, autumn's first frost, the unconditional love of a pet, reading a good book, laughter—be grateful for whatever it is that brings you joy. 

Conversely, it is imperative to find gratitude during times of hardship and suffering, perhaps it is most important in these times to find even one thing for which to be grateful. It was during a period of seemingly insurmountable, depression and daily financial struggle, that the Light turned on and my Peace was born. The struggle didn't end in that moment, but it made the moments of struggle easier to bear. 

Nicola Tesla once said, "to understand the secrets of the Universe, one should think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration." 

The Universe always says, "yes." If you are vibrating at a low frequency—fear, stress, sadness, worry, anger, hate, spitefulness, jealousy, envy, a lack mindset—that energy, that vibration, will attract more circumstances into your life to keep you rooted there. Once I made a conscious choice to live fully in the present moment, to become aware in the present moment, and simply express gratitude for things I once took for granted, that's when things began to shift, and I'm talking magnitude 10.0 shifting here! 

Once you begin vibrating higher, there is no going back. It's like your DNA has been upgraded and is no longer compatible with that outdated, slower, antiquated mindset. Are there still bad days? Absolutely, but it's uncomfortable to stay too long in those negative frequencies. It's like wearing a burlap suit with a head-to-toe sunburn—it is quite literally, physically uncomfortable—mercifully, gratitude strips off that suit and heals the burn, allowing those higher frequencies, like an old radio, to tune in once again. 

Timelines are shifting, the collective is awakening, the old paradigm is falling away. Life is beautiful. Take a moment to express gratitude for one small thing that brings you joy, practice doing this until it is as natural as breathing. The abundance you seek will follow. 

Vibrate higher.