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| January 2007 Floating nightly in my hot tub on an inflated air mattress with two other (uninflated) air mattresses as warming blankets on my naked body, I fall into the edgy brilliance of the millions of stars visible above the surrounding darkened mountains. The freezing temperatures we've been having this week seem to intensify the radiance and deepen the darkness. It's an amazing voyage I drift into as coyotes sing in the distant groves and owls hoot in the nearby trees-until the wind machines (giant propellers on tall poles in those groves) gear up. Then, it's like being surrounded by an army of helicopters hovering close to the ground. The overwhelming noise drives me out of my waking dream and into the refuge of my cottage. When the temperatures dip below freezing, the wind machines keep the cold air from pooling at ground level. This, watering the trees so that a protective film of ice forms on them and lighting diesel fuel in chimneyed containers (smudge pots that glow as eerie red shapes in the groves) are the ways the citrus growers try to save their still-on-the-trees crop. Alas, after 6 successive days of temperatures in the teens and twenties for several hours each night in our valley, over 70% of this year's orange, navel, grapefruit and lemon crop has been lost to frost damage. Local avocado and strawberry crops have been decimated as well. There is a pall over the valley and, in the mornings and evenings as temperatures hover in the 40's, people around town are dressed as if for eastern winter. But for the rosebushes and my leafy green winter vegetables, what's left of my pruned back little garden has been totally fried by the frost. So, too, the young Meyer lemon, blood orange, ruby grapefruit and tangelo trees that I planted last year. The cold sears things in much the same way that excessive heat does. Leaves brown, curl, become brittle and crumble. Still, the frosty temperatures persist. To escape the sounds and vibration of the wind machines, I sleep indoors behind double-paned glass French doors and windows these freezing nights. I sorely miss the nights outdoors yet, I get used to the change. At first I feel grumpy and thwarted. But, soon after that comes a surrendering into just what's so in the moment. That process has grown roots everywhere in my life: feel the sharp intensity of whatever feelings rise in any challenging circumstances, give full vent to the energy of those feelings, then yield and choose to surrender into just what is so. More and more it takes less and less time to move through the sequence. I don't ever require that I love or even like the circumstances into which I surrender. I can fiercely hate them and yet choose not to resist them. When I choose not to resist, I'm able to be fully present in the moment. Being fully, consciously in the middle of exactly where I am grounds me. And, it's there that the doorway to the next place usually emerges. After a fall filled with intensity and struggle, I've been blessed this past month with a vibrant sense of rising, soaring, opening to a flood of abundance on many levels. The dramatic upheaval with my old friend, the grief, sadness and anger over the rupture between us and the subsequent bouts of turmoil from remnants of the Hatchet Lady within all seem to have emptied me out in some way, made a space into which newness might flow. Magically, the turning began just as we were moving into the Winter Solstice, to the returning of the light that Solstice heralds. My therapy practice has always been blessed. It's filled with remarkable, amazing women who touch my heart and who feel profoundly familiar in some deep way. Usually it renews itself without much attention or effort on my part. Someone I'm working with graduates or feels ready to come less frequently or to go on hiatus. Someone else usually arrives not too long afterward to fill the space opened in my schedule (unless I'm clearly meant to have a rest-time). For several years now the someone elses, coming one at a time, have either been former clients returning for another cycle of collaboration or women from other geographies drawn to working with me (by phone) by the resonance they feel reading tales of my journey on my web site. In the week before Solstice things happened a bit differently. Four new women arrived all at once, each referred by a current or former client. Three were local women and one a woman who'd be working with me by phone. All four felt like perfect matches, women with whom I knew I'd love to be working. All are women whose issues are close to my heart: extremely effective, successful women who are exhausted by all the demands they keep meeting and who are needing desperately to find some room in their lives for nourishing their overdone selves. Over the next few days, four spaces magically opened in my schedule. It's been a long time since there's been such a bounty of new people all at once. It's feeling exciting and delicious to be joining these juicy women on their journeys. The next week brought another kind of bounty. First a small but generous surprise bequest came from my great aunt who had died this summer. She left me the gift as an acknowledgement of her appreciation of my always remembering her on birthdays, on holidays and with our monthly gabfests over the years. A day later another surprise check arrived, this one a second annual “royalty check” from my sweet friend Karen Drucker-she of the amazing voice and extraordinary Songs of the Spirit. (Do check her out at her web site www.karendrucker.com.) Karen had asked my permission last year to use the “go only as fast as the slowest part of you feels safe to go” quote in one of the songs on her last CD. It had been a personal mantra for her and it just wanted to be part of her song. Of course, I was delighted to give her permission. I was shocked when a check marked “royalties” came in from her a year ago in December. When this year's check came I was just as surprised, I'd thought it was a one-time thing. Two weeks later, an email came from my book agent to say she was writing the cover letter, gathering the pieces of the selling packet and planning to make calls to the 10 small presses on her list before the next week. Though I'll believe it when it actually happens, it was very exciting to have such a specific time commitment from her. It's felt like a smashingly wonderful beginning to the New Year. I feel lighthearted, jubilant, unfurling. I find I'm back to singing my old songs and chants along the trail at night. And, I've been dancing around the house (to Janis Ian's new Folk is the New Black CD) as I move through the year end/year beginning rituals of going through all my “stuff.” Everything keeps falling easily into place as I deep cleanse my house, gather together my tax information for a February 1st tax appointment, tend my decimated garden, write my dozens of New Year's cards and prepare for another 3-day sojourn with my dad and sister in Florida at the end of the month. Even two days of jury duty during my meant-to-be-unplugged week didn't rain on the parade I seem to be in the middle of right now. Life this month is a delightful treat. I'm copying here the Inspirations for the Year Ahead, my annual gathering of quotes that want to go along with my Solstice/New Year's cards. And, I'm also adding something I myself wrote recently (for someone I work with) about the magic of the human organism. (If you'd like to see and read the message on this year's Solstice/New Year's card, click here: Quiet Woman.) Sending all of you a bounty of blessings and warmest wishes for a gentle, richly nourishing year ahead. Inspirations for the Year Ahead - 2007 When you dive into the river look at what your hands are trying to hold when all there is is water find how the current molds along your body with no gaps or abandonment see how all the most weightless things- fragments of leaves on the water fragments of light are never trying to swim toward where they are not going. -Kristina Grondahl Bear It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. -Virginia Woolfe And how did you find the truth? I did not. I only stopped hearing the lies. My own feelings became too loud. -Susan Griffin …solitude can be a much-to-be-desired condition. Not only is it acceptable to be alone, at times it is positively to be wished for. It is in the interludes between being in company that we talk to ourselves. In the silence we listen to ourselves…ask questions of ourselves…describe ourselves to ourselves and in the quietude we may even hear the voice of God. -Maya Angelou Isolation is aloneness that feels forced upon you, like a punishment. Solitude is aloneness that you choose and embrace…great things can come out of solitude, out of going to a place where all is quiet except the beating of your heart. -Jeanne Marie Laskas What will help us learn once more how to let the moment slip as if slipping through an eternal glass from the purposeful and known …to the timeless? -Judith Duerk Don't surrender your loneliness So quickly Let it cut more deep. Let it ferment and season you As few divine ingredients can. -Hafiz Today I feel stronger, learning to live within the natural cycles of a day and not to expect so much of myself. As women, we hold the moon in our bellies. It is too much to ask to operate on full-moon energy 365 days a year. I am in a crescent phase. -Terry Tempest Williams Silence is the strength of our interior life…If we fill our lives with silence, then we will live in hope. -Thomas Merton A strong wommon is one who is a friend to herself, who nourishes herself, who looks after herself with the recklessness of nature, who-like a cat-allows herself an egotistical enjoyment of life. -Ripening, an Almanac Things to Remember about the Infinite Magic of the Human Organism: The being, by its very nature, moves always in the direction of growth, evolving moment by moment even when the process is feeling invisible and the steps are microscopic Growth and forward motion continue whether we are vigilant or not. Pushing ourselves often slows the process: it stirs resistance in the healthy parts of us who are protecting the natural flow from being overthrown or interfered with. When things feel really hard, slowing way down allows the internal, organic balancing process to work its magic. When you get scared that you'll never come out of this (or any other place in which you find yourself) remember that everything in us moves always toward growth and change-no matter how it looks to our outside eye. -Robyn Posin To visit the Bulletin Board Archive Table of Contents Site Directory (for non-frames viewing)
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