Today’s infographic comes from life and well-being coach Shawn Fink. She’s the founder of the Abundant Mama Project. I regularly get her newsletter in my inbox. She was talking today about her 14 year old daughter who struggles with boredom and how her daughter is an extrovert while the rest of the family tends to be introverted, and she an ambivert.

Do we want to thrive?

I was going through a difficult time several months ago, and I was working with a coach (a different one than I mentioned) who wasn’t hearing me out. She kept asking me to say I wanted joy. At the time, the pandemic had just started and her organization was in the denial of Covid camp. “It was like the flu,” they insinuated. No, it is not. I was having trouble with the “stay positive at all costs” belief systems in my New Age communities. I wanted/and want to see real action and sincerity in the response to this viral threat. Being “high-risk” myself, I wasn’t walking around acting like “well, I have my spiritual bravado to protect me.” For me, I experienced all the humility of being a person who is in charge of being healthy for a young family. I took it (and take it all) very seriously. Spirituality aside, we live in a world where these threats are real, just like the possibility of any other danger, such as fire burns.

Do we want to thrive?

Yes.

Even in the midst of the pandemic (and the life changes because of the worldwide pandemic), even when our most inner self-sabotage can come out to get us, even while struggling to make ends meet.

Yes, we want to thrive.

When so many are suffering, are we even allowed to thrive?

I say yes, and I consider how wonderful and simple the above infographic is, knowing I’ve inwardly been using the above strategies without that coach who I was better off without for the time being.

How are you thriving in ways you don’t even know it? How have you indirectly benefited from the pandemic? What changes have you made that turned to be better for you since you had to make the changes?

We can see that our busy, bustling lives and economies are not in best with the environment. It doesn’t even take all the data and science to see and witness how the environment is affected by our human habits, waste, and extravagances.

How can our environment thrive with us thriving, too? Maybe we can reach up and reach out to our environments? Maybe we can take small steps in social action, maybe we can focus on what brings us joy today. I’m ready to talk about joy, again.

Once again I have been inspired to share from my private grimoire, a small piece from my 15 month body of work, during the Rite of the 12 Celestial Regents. Here is my ode to Mercury at the retrograde station. I am still in review process/month and soon the moon will be new again, and I shall have moved on…

Ode to Mercury:

When I am understanding

That life is not demanding

And the virtues of clarity and reason

Are very much in touch with the season-

When my tendency to think

Has me spinning and on the brink

I can turn to you and you will

Find me a reason to open and fill

My heart with connection.

And the virtues

This interview popped up in my YouTube feed for some reason. Many of us from the United States remember the president well from the 1980s and 1990s and we are well-acquainted with his character. I’m sharing this post for many international viewers who might not “remember” back to 1994.

We are at a critical point in time when women are still trying to be recognized as equal citizens on the planet. There are a lot of differences of opinion out there. I believe in women. I believe in the future. Please consider voting him out. For my international friends, please consider who you trust when you are researching and looking around online. Many of us are alive long enough to know a person’s story longer term.

https://youtu.be/zfMqgdOA5PM

Hello my friends,

The editor is different! I didn’t expect that 🙂

Well, I have been away from blogging for a very long time. I am only around here and there and quite infrequently because I have been busy with motherhood full-time and graduate school full-time, finishing up my last semester in my Master’s program with only 7 more classes to complete my doctorate in Traditional Chinese medicine. If I choose to do that. I also have some straggling onsite clinic work to do when the pandemic becomes less threatening. Meanwhile I’ve been a senior intern in our telehealth and finishing classes.

Also, I am finishing up my 15 month Medicine Woman certification for Rite of the 12 Celestial Regents. As you know, I haven’t had time for my other hobbies like art-making: painting, poetry, or sketching, blogging or photography. My outdoor garden (which is only an urban tower) has been silent and nothing happening there, either.

Oh, but I have been cooking so much and experimenting and having the best time with it!! There’s been no time to prepare posts to my food blog, so I don’t. Life has been pretty darn good during this pandemic despite all the craziness that is around. I’ve enjoyed celebrating Mabon this year with one of my tribes over zoom and with my family. I’ve always been a member of so many different communities. So here I am, back with my own community, on my blog. I love you all so much!!

I wanted to share one of my odes that I wrote for my certificate for Medicine Woman studies: Rite of the 12 celestial Regents. It was an intensive program full of self-development and unveiling shadows, and it was truly a blessing. Here is my ode to the Moon recorded from my private grimoire I created during these last 15 months.

Mother moon I cannot lie

Under you I cry

For in the night I’m fearful and shy

But your love’s not for reason or for whys

You keep my heart safe and wise

And you gently remind me where my true love lies.

Deep inside surrounded within pure prize

Lots of gratitude to my daughter for napping peacefully while I quickly transcribed this message. Wishing you all a beautiful rest of your week! Looking forward to seeing you over at your blogs!

Ka

I want to establish some basics:

1. I interpret astrology, though I haven’t for a while, because it hasn’t been enjoyable. I do NOT channel. While I’m an intuitive, and practice forms of shamanism as taught to me, I do not have “visions” that come in without me asking for advice or input.
2. While I have “guides,” I see them as a “higher aspect” of myself. They are also quiet unless engaged. I have zero intrusions into my consciousness from spirits or beings without invitation. And often I wait in silence. For years.
3. I am mostly Buddhist, but I’m also not religious.
4. I do not believe that we are “awakening” in the same way as people speak of “ascension” in popular culture or anywhere. I do not have a direct line of insight into this, and I do not prescribe to it directly. We hope we are developing as a human species, overall. I do not have and direct info into this being guided by “God” or ETs, etc…” I don’t believe in these channeled ideas.
5. I am hopeful that we can turn around the current corruption in the United States government.
6. I am upset about racial injustice.
7. “Anarchy” and “socialism” are used as hypothetical myths that politicians are using to bring on fear and sew tremendous distrust in citizens. People are being pit against each other in the name “winning.”
8. There is a tremendous amount of misinformation being broadly distributed by very popular social media people; some of them are bots but many, many are not.
9. We need to form a just society where character matters and leadership is not corrupted by “bullies,” and political and financial favors behind the scenes.
10. If you’ve read this far, maybe you care somewhat about what I have to say. Let me know you care and leave a kind comment.

Tara Brach is one of the most grounded, compassionate, and sensible people I have been listening to lately. This is how I prefer to spend my time.

Here’s her talk about “our relationship with anxiety”

https://www.tarabrach.com/?powerpress_pinw=11117-podcast

Ra Avis from Rarasaur came up with Blog Bingo for August. I’ve only posted when I was inspired to write, and/or the universe pried open or carved out time for me to eke out some content. But, besides being such a wonderfully potent writer, Rara’s inspired me with gentle ideas like “blog bingo.” I applaud the simplicity and brilliance of such a possibly achievable idea.

I’m devastated by a lot of things that are happening, one of which is the fires 🔥 that are burning up North California. Beautiful places where my husband and I lived and enjoyed our weekend adventures are currently under evacuation. The old growth forests are threatened.

Basically what I’m saying, is that I need the intensity dial turned way down on the atrocities of the world right now. And basically, I’m interested in cultivating my tiny bubble of ease and comfort. I want to expand and propagate “ease” and “satisfaction” with where it’s doable.

So, where am I at? I’ve blogged 3 times in August, but haven’t been playing to “win.” We are in the last week of August. Since it’s Virgo season and a little bit more “time” is leftover at the tail end of “a month included in the outrageous 2020 year,” I thought maybe I’d assess my current bingo card and attempt to at least try to connect some space: strategize.

Three posts would be 3 spaces, theoretically. We have the serious and expressively (and vulnerable-revealing) post “Committing to the Moment. We have “Recipe for Freedom” and then (because all month long and lately I’ve been so focused on food) the surprisingly named poem about food/poetry, “Ah hah”. Interesting fact is I named the last poem with my “gut,” by using sounds. Sounds are so important in many healing modalities for processing, healing, and moving through pain.

I didn’t explain that all before (and I still haven’t done anything but point to it) because there’s always so much to explain and discuss but such little time to do so. I digress.

Today’s post can be “photo” space. I’ve got “recipe” and “poem.” As you can see, this isn’t gonna cut it for Bingo! So I will have to think about it. I can only use one space per blog post, so I can’t use this blog post as “unfinished.”

I also wrote about “sound” with “poem” as you can see my explanation above, but I know it won’t count for both…

Any ideas? Anyone want to help me?

I need poetry. Fresh.
no time to heat it
in the kitchen,

poetry.
right now.

from the refrigerator,
juicy. Now. Poetry ~
so my teeth can sink in
as the juices flow into
a messy moustache
around my mouth.

poetry is consumed
and used for fuel
burned in my middle jiao 🔥
powering the lights
behind my eyes,
the lights that go on when my
eyes close.

Poetry.

that changes me,
adds weight,
fills my stomach
and then sits with a glass of wine
with dynamic flavors

poetry on my fork,
as dessert, and several servings
of annotations.

Focus on acceptance, love, & forgiveness

Develop compassion for the self.
keep filling the empty cups until they
spill over,

sickness: fill
loneliness: fill
darkness: fill
fear: fill
doubt: fill
jealousy: fill
confusion: fill
disagreement: fill

if facing a downward spiral: first step aside, and then step up, and out.

look for a conveyer belt up, follow someone’s smile after really watching them animate and glitter

💖

and then, be sure to add more love and patience to your own cups.

in fact, don’t stop filling your cup with presence, awareness, commitment

We are going through the most challenging times, collectively.

Not in my lifetime have I seen the need to pull together more than ever.

I told Susan I could commit to “right now,” on day 1 of 40 days of abundance journey. You can follow the journey here. I’m curious if I will show up for more.

What you see written here is the guiding thought Susan provides at the link above, a daily guiding thought for 40 days. What is underneath that (thinking in layer) is my reflection on the guiding thought, which led me to want to express through these paints that I am experimenting with.

They are a new medium for me and I wanted to give them a brief “test drive.” I don’t have the proper paper, but this was just an exercise to loosen up and introduce myself to the medium.

You might remember from my previous posts:

Here and here where I work with 5 minutes at a time: art and meditation.

Susan’s dedication and commitment (Day 1, today) asked us what we could commit to, and I did approx 5 min of expressing and reflecting from the guiding principle. My desire was to bring some color to my page in a way that didn’t take me too much time and was also part of a deeper process: All is Good.

You might recall that I talk about not having a lot of time, that’s remains the same, and even less time with my little kiddo.

Why the Toucan? I’ve been working diligently on my apprenticeship with my Medicine Woman 8th ray magic: Rite of the 12 celestial regents. See this about the program, with its goal of “purpose good.” This toucan appeared to me as one of the guides I am working closely with for the month based closely on the moon’s phases. For some of my readers might recall that I am a shamanic practitioner having studied for over 5 years in an official way, with this teacher, and many many others, before that I was “self-taught” and practiced independently.

With Susan’s guided thoughts in the Journey of Abundance, there’s really no distinctions being drawn about teaching or self-teaching. There’s this inner commitment and the path of the true self, the divine one of all. I’m fortunate to have so much support in my art and spiritual pursuits. I have spent so much of my life on some type of “journey” in a spiritual way. Next week I will be 40 years old.

I can thank Janet from here, for her inspiration during her virtual trip to Wales. See the link to join the trip! Because of Janet, I did a couple of sketches of my daughter (toddler) a couple of weeks ago and keep slowly doing little bits of art here and there when I can carve out the time. She also inspired to get the type of supplies that I am now experimenting with here in this photo: gouache and tombow pens. Yes! This is exactly what I need to squeeze into my days!

~ 💗~

My beloved grandmother passed away last week. I’ve been grieving and celebrating her presence in my life. We had tough months where family couldn’t visit her due to Covid lockdown at nursing homes for 3 months. She’s lives across the country from me. She had dementia and was 99 years old. She survived pelvic and femur surgery last year in 2019 after a fall, but she and her sincere strength–so blessed as she is–was ready to move on. Family was able to visit hospice at the end, and it was a long process. I was able to see her on FaceTime and project my voice so she could hear me, though she was unable to talk in her final weeks.

A big artistic inspiration is her family homeland in Italy, where she grew up, and where I visited for the first time in 2016. I hope whenever I have time I can go back and use those pictures as “jumping off points” for future artwork. Also, I was so in love with the village of Crickadoon in Janet’s Wale’s trip, I want to circle back there and take up my supplies and use those for inspiration. For now I have spent all day catching up on a myriad of other things that I am far behind on. Already this post is well beyond the 5 mins I was trying to keep to minimum.

I am grateful to have been able to do shamanic journeying for my grandmother, and to be part of her process, for responding to her needs and listening in to her requests at a time when she couldn’t talk. Also grateful for being such a close companion to her as a child, which she remarked about continuously throughout the years. “She was good company,” referring to me.

May she Rest In Peace. So loved.

And, you can still keep an open mind. I see in many places that there is an attack on fear. People fear fear. While fear can lead to poor decisions and bad calculations, it can also bring necessary caution.

We live during very challenging times. If adaptation is hard for you, that is okay. Businesses and institutions are pushing to survive. We are all trying to survive, to feed our families, to protect our families. We are all trying to make “Hope” even when we don’t feel it ourselves. This if how we survive when we don’t know when the relief will come, or how.

It’s okay to be afraid. Being aware of your vulnerability doesn’t make you a coward; it doesn’t make you weak; and it doesn’t make you a bad person if you find it hard to be positive. We are living during difficult times. Difficulty requires love and compassion. It requires patience, and often we may not have any extra.

These times are transforming us in ways we don’t even know. As a planet we are facing challenges we have not experienced for a long time. It’s okay to be afraid, to not know, to not be turning every moment into its silver lining.

It’s okay to be afraid.

The sound of coffee cups

And breakfast plates clinking

The birds in the morning

The hawk from yesterday

She is always by my side, these days,

it seems,

My aumakua 💗

Walk with me shadow,

in the morning

light; my other companion,

as we listen to the piercing cry

of my soaring hawk

companion,

and the morning doves with flapping wings

I and you are not alone in this hot world

with Covid threatening

The news is deafening

but my morning walk is peaceful, bright, serene

There are ways to build worlds within worlds

to live inside eggs within eggs

creating safe spaces in these smaller circles

The rabbit hops across the street with grass in her mouth.

filling up with sun and love

When pausing a thought,

The dove flies away,

you know the sound

The bees buzz swelling from pine trees…

that kind of abundance.

***poems while walking***

I quickly left the house without any makeup on. I rarely wear it anyways these days, but I still think makeup is fun.

This morning I really wanted to get a peaceful walk in. We are having one of those perfect gray days where it’s nice and cool.

Leaving my Invisalign in the house and not having them on my teeth is a “no no” but my teeth have been shifting and straightening just fine when I do this. Early on I very closely adhered to having them in as close to 24/7, but today having this walk and writing a blog at the same time.

Normally I wouldn’t share a photo of myself, much less would I share a photo of myself like this, but I’m pretty sure that happiness is good enough for me. See the above picture is from the stone I saw immediately after leaving my house, giving me a most lovely message.

My 40th birthday is coming up soon, and I’m coming to terms with it, being reflective, purposeful, inspired.

‘Age’ messages have been coming up all over the place. I was listening to podcast with face reader Lillian Bridges and this one caught my eye. I want to do this earlier, I thought.

Then I saw this one above, and I am thinking of ways to be adventurous includes sharing this picture of me on my blog. Why not?

I hope, you, my readers are well. I look forward to “seeing” you again, soon! I’m going to enjoy my walk now…. just wanted to share 💗

“Perfectionism is a virus, widespread in Western culture, which keeps us running on the treadmill of never-enoughness.”

Took-pa Turner, from Belonging: Remembering ourselves home.

I’ve been giving my blog a rest. Like when the digestive system has been through so many new tastes and flavors, and maybe it has been “detoxing” from the outside world. The digestive system is the entry way to the external world, much like the lungs and the skin, as is my blog. It’s important to narrow these windows so that one’s insides are cast in far more light. It’s called focus, and it’s a beautiful and underestimated ability.

My blog is like skin, facing the outside world, but it needs hydration from me. It’s no longer about the things it was about before, and still, it is. It’s being exfoliated. It’s wonderful, and it happens, in part, with this resting process. Meanwhile a new layer of skin is prepared, effortlessly.

Freshness and inspiration has been flowing through (“new blood”) in the brief moments I get away from being on Zoom for necessary work, and from parenting and also trying to maintain my home, study, collaborate, and while still giving inner air to my dreams. The dreams that are born in the decisions I make today. The work I do is still based on my decisions I made ~4-5 years ago.

During lockdown, I’ve been less bothered by the rules around me and more grateful for the personal decisions and all the power I have over my every day life.

There have been so many stressful times. There have been lots of toss-and-turn nights, but in the end, or at the pause, there’s tremendous inner peace. There’s also excitement and potential everywhere I look. We live in rapidly changing times; innovation is the necessity of the day, and we already know thanks to Plato, “Necessity is the Mother of Invention.” So, who is the Mother of the Mother of Invention? Silence? The pause? Yes, the pregnant pause!

I’ve been watching my daughter grow and my laceration wound on my hand heal. I could easily have put all my attention into this and not done the 500 million other things I’m doing (including other body processes). But consider this: my heart did not stop beating because my hand was cut. My heart and all my body processes, in part, did their main jobs, which contributed to the good of my healing my laceration wound. Win-win for the whole body.

Sure I had to adapt a lot, but mostly that was in my innovation for dressing and caring for my wound while using my hand to care for my wiggly child.

How can anyone even talk about perfection in all this? The concept of perfection is a bit of a black hole. It sucks up the available energy by condensing it, focusing it. I think perfection is awesome, but it’s useless to fret over in organic inter-connected systems. I’ve been listening to podcasts about non-linear systems, but I haven’t delved into the modeling myself. The fact that it is possible to model the non-linear is pretty amazing to me!

We are already living in perfection. The rest of what we do, when we have the opportunity, when we aren’t immediately faced with maintaining our skin and our respiration, is our choice. Choice and perfection don’t exist in the same universe, but they also do and they have everything to do with each other. Once one chooses, one creates. Once one creates, one improves, and we never want that to stop.

We don’t want life to stop, because the animation, movement, Is the perfection.