You may not believe this....

I love my body. I love the way it can change at my whim. I love taking the mental tour, riding the course of the blood through my heart, picturing the rhythmic, steady beating, pumping. When I used to donate blood regularly, I used to be amazed at how warm the bag was, as it filled, propped heavily next to me. Warm and comforting, waiting to share it's nurturing energy with someone else. I love my body and how I can both give and receive touches, to my legs, my belly, feeling the softness of the skin, or appreciating the rough that needs smoothing. I love the way the curves can be sculpted and that at any time in one's life, the body can be changed. It can wax and wane in size, like the moon. It can recover from famine and obesity. It can grow more muscle and gain strength at any site where muscle exists. This body allows me to hear music and soar in my imagination with the sounds. I can savor foods and have a thirst that when quenched tastes the best water ever. I can smell and see, touch and hear. I can move and feel the stretch of a tired muscle, take comfort in the feeling of my straight hair pulled between two fingers. I love my body and the opportunity it affords me. To curl up in comfort under a warm and heavy blanket for a guilt free nap in the afternoon. To retreat into my mind for trips into the past or the future, rich with possibility. The body is a gift, in any state. Pain, as I have experienced in childbirth, can serve so much as a pendulum. In labor, the absence of pain is pleasure. In debilitating disease, the pain is feeling, it is experience and I imagine, it allows one insights into realms unreachable without it. In any form, the body is a gift, a wonder and a delight. There is good in it all and in all its possibilities. I ask you, today, to look at your body with different eyes, seeing it for what it is; a miracle. Talk to your organs, your heart, lungs, kidneys, intestines, your muscles, blood vessels, brain and bones. Notice how cuts heal and change is always possible. Notice how food is digested and water is absorbed. See your precious body for what it is, and LOVE it, give it the gift of your appreciation, your care and watch how it responds.

Angels

I was given this beautiful Rose Quartz Angel by my friend Eveline Maria, who is an angel incarnate. One of many Angels I am working with these days. They seem to be emerging from the woodwork, eager to assist, generous beyond reason, connected to my heart, even when I have yet to know their faces. I set this Angel on my table, with my therapeutic gemstone jewelry at the Winter Solstice Goddess Party. She had many admirers. I promised a few of them that I would find out where my friend Eveline Maria found her and provide a contact so that other angels could be brought home to Santa Barbara. This Angel came from Austrailia, from a woman named Kimberlee. Kimberlee is working on a film called The Crystalline Peace Project, compiling earthy images of peace. She can be reached via e-mail at kimberlee@chariot.net.au . Happy Angel connecting!

DARE TO DREAM IT!

I have a dream. My dream involves a harmonious planet populated with beings who respect themselves and each other. A planet that is no longer called infear but referred to by it's true name, GRACE. I have a dream that we can build and achieve all that we can imagine if our hearts and minds are truthful and authentic. Our work is fun and prosperous. We are able to support one another and share our prosperity. It becomes infectious. My dream starts with a store front in SANTA BARBARA where in collaboration with my friend(s) we can create a sanctuary of tea and community, of ritual and celebration of cultures. Our tea house is called HEALING TEA. HEALING TEA will have tea rituals from around the world on the menu. We will offer Ceremonial Japanese Green Tea, Persian Tea, English High Tea, Himaliayan Chai Tea, Amazonian Yerba Mate, and much more. We will also offer healing teas for the mind, body and spirit, infused with gem elixers. We will provide delicious raw finger foods and traditional accompaniments to the regional tea services. We, of course, will also serve Italian Coffee and Peruvian Hot Chocolate. Our tea house will have space for the sale of arts and objects that add to the nurturing spirit of our community. Apparel, jewelry, ornaments and comforts for the home, and gemstones, of course, will be available for purchase. We will create a space for gatherings such as a knitting circle and other opportunities to nurture our creativity. We will offer special services for milestones such as birthdays, life transitions and accomplishments. We will nurture the uniqueness that our community houses and honor the strengths of the individuals that comprise its whole. Our HEALING TEA HOUSE is a dream that will come to fruition. We need a space and the financial investment resources to make it happen. Improvements to a space may cost as much as $250,000 and rent may be as much as $4,000 per month. So, I am asking the universe to connect me to these resources and guide me in the leaps that need to be made. I have a dream. I believe in my dream. Watch me make it happen. Join me in making it happen. Contact me if you have any ideas, leads on spaces, or a desire to provide monetary backing for this worthwhile project. Thank you. THANK YOU.

Appreciation

She wears a bell around her neck. She would be stealth and dangerous to birds without it because she doesn't meow like other cats I have known. Every morning, in the pre-dawn darkness, she enters our room with a jingle, jumps onto the bed, and tries to stir me by standing on me or approaching me head. I pet her a bit, or ignore her altogether. She leaves only to return a few minutes later. We repeat the same process. Again, she behaves like the snooze button on an alarm clock, trying time and time again to rouse me. She does this countless times each day until I finally do what she wants me to do, and get out of bed. This pattern has been repeating now long enough and predictably enough for me to notice. This is a working cat who knows my schedule. I am an early riser. It is in the quiet pre-dawn dakness that I am able to get my work done. It is the time that belongs to no one but me, and now, the orange tabby, Clarissa, who's occupation seems in part to be guiding me to my work. To own the hours that belong to me and make use of what is precious. In appreciation, I aknowledge her and others I am noticing more and more.

LOVE

It is such a common word. Thrown around casually or withheld in discomfort. It is simple and I think it is the key to heal, nurture, save, reconcile, forgive, rebuild, open up, step out and really live fully. Love. Love lets you crank up the Charlie Brown Christmas music in your car as you wait in line at school to collect your child so the parents around you can hear it too. Love allows you to heal the horrific wounds of war by allowing perpetrators to provide and victims to accept an acknowledgement and an apology. Love of life gives us the sight to see all that is beautiful, to feel all that is joyful in our everyday experiences. The full moon shimmering a path on the placid, black water. Love displaces greed. Love displaces fear. Fear that there won't be enough. Fear that if we give too much it will open a door to theft. Love provides an impenetrable armor against the most deadly attack. Love softens the blow of infidelity, betrayal, the human weakness that we are all capable of. Love of ourselves first strengthens our hearts and readies them to face any and all challenges. When we have love for ourselves, and we nurture our passions, we are whole and can not be shattered. Our souls are unbreakable. Love allows us to float in joy by attracting more of the same where ever we go. Love creates itself infectious and communicable. Love opens doors and hearts. Love melts frigidity. Love changes people. Love reverses tragedy. Give it to yourself. Give it away. The supply is endless. The more you use the more there is. Give a drop and receive a wave. LOVE. I mean it.

The Secret

She whispers it to me. Laughing, hiding her mouth so I only see her eyes. It is fun for her to know this and keep it hidden from me. She says it is like a present that you can unwrap at any time. The secret is..... We create our own experience. In essence, we are driving our own destiny. We can play with the future. We can create wealth, poverty, heath or illness. We can create love and unity or discord and disruption. As souls in physical form, we are capable of attracting whatever we want. We have a hard time knowing what that is and even second guess ourselves when we do know what we want. We are afraid of being wrong. We are afraid to ask. We won't even vocalize our wishes sometimes because we believe they could never happen. We don't always trust ourselves.

I have since childhood, seen the future as a present. wrapped up for me to open and enjoy. My life has really been like that. I enjoy it. I, of course, have a list of manifestations that I am willing into action. Money - so much that I have plenty to share, an easement of the self criticism that hinders the manifestational abilities of my loved ones, health and a healthy appreciation of the miraculous machine that IS my body, and of course, world peace through a very specific visualization of my limitless heart energy wrapping around the planet twice, empowering each individual with the gift of self love and compassion. I dream big. I don't limit myself. How else can I propel myself to the status of benvolent ruler of the planet?

The Evolution of Doubt

Raising children provides a bit of an opportunity to study human nature. I have the privelidge of being a stepmother of two girls who are now in the mid teen and early adulthood stages of their lives, so I really have observed the course of self power that evolves as we grow. My small children, an observant and stubborn three year old and a dreamy, distractable six year old serve as my early childhood models. They are demanding of what they want. The ask for big and small, dream of trips to Disneyland and swimming with dolphins in Hawaii. They manifest with their words and in their art. They do not doubt in their ability to get what they want. My teenage children are at the stage of being afraid to want. They tell me, they can not have strong desires because their fear of not receiving or achieving is too great. Failure would be too painful. Fear of not getting is motivation for not asking, not wanting. The oldest, who is in college now, expressed her fears about not getting into the right college from the first semester of her freshman year in high school. Her motivation for learning was not to learn, but to earn the grade that would provide the best chance of getting into the most competitive schools. It was her belief that students who didn't achieve a 4.0 grade point average were doomed to sub-standard collegic experiences. When it came time to apply, she dared to not want any one college too much, for the fear of not getting what she wanted was greater than the hope that she would achieve her goal. She was confirmed when she auditioned for the UCLA school of theater, a very small, highly competitive program, and vocalized a passionate desire to be accepted into this program and was very disappointed when she did not get accepted. In hindsight, she is now a student at a small, highly respected liberal arts college in the pacific north west and has been very active in the theater department. I am now experiencing the same doubtful behavior emerging from my second stepdaughter. Now a highschool freshman, she is more mature and self-aware than most her age, but still limits her future with her verbal communication of doubt. I don't know exactly how she feels but what she verbalizes to me is the same fear her sister had about the grades and the colleges. She actually insisted to me that she was not a smart as I thought she was, implying very strongly that I didn't know the real her. Of course, this is all a bunch of "dark matter" which clouds the truth and weighs down the heart to the point of self doubt or even self-loathing. Being an optimist and a full believer and subscriber in the law of attraction, I prefer to see my children in the stage of believing in miracles and asking for the world. I know, from experience, that if there is something you really want, you can and will have it. You may have to take steps and never accept failure as an option, but you will have it. It may not fall into your lap, you may not know how it will come to be yours, but if you believe that it will happen, it WILL HAPPEN. I used to write notes to the universe or god and ask for very specific things. My husband started out as a journal entry with qualities listed and he showed up as a blind date. My child was a request made on a strip of paper placed in my Wish Box. She came to me as a positive pregnancy test on my thirtieth birthday. Our house, which we wanted to buy but couldn't (because the owner would not sell) came to us after a request was made to the universe, in writing, as a wish in my Wish Box. It was unforeseen circumstances that led the owner to a place where he needed to sell the house. My daughter was six weeks old when we signed the papers. Over and over I have made requests. I know that for me there are no limits to what I can have, so I am shooting BIG. I am shooting for the elimination of self doubt of all people. I am aiming for the birth of self forgiveness and compassion for ALL PEOPLE. I am envisioning the feeling for existing in a world where there are no limits to what we can achieve. NO LIMITS.

How to Make it ALL Fun!

We switched cars, my husband and I, so he could take my Toyota hybrid on a long day-trip to Monterey and I could tootle around town, doing motherly things, in his non-hybrid car. I dropped the kids off at their respective schools. I actually thought to myself, "this car is like driving a roller skate with metal wheels", as I felt every bump in the road, evry crack. Later, as I exited the freeway on my way to a meeting and I felt the tell-tale thud-thud-thud-thud, I know why the car drove like that. It pretty much WAS a roller skate with a metal wheel. I was, miraculously, never annoyed. I was happy my husband was safely driving my car and that my kids were in school so I had the time to wait for triple A. I was not annoyed, alarmed or peeved. I left my car, walked to my meeting, and when it was over, arranged to have a nice man in thick gloves change my tire. While I waited, I took some photographs, as I always carry my camera in my purse. I took this picture and some other beautiful shots of flowers, sun-dappled leaves, a statue of two doves kissing. It was an altogether lovely morning. Sure, I was'nt able to write a blog that morning, or make a belly chain, but I did receive some much needed time to just breathe, enjoy the veiw of the mountains in the morning light and just spend a few minutes with myself. I believe situations like this one happen for a reason. I think if we can look at even the seemingly tough situations as opportunity, we learn that it CAN all be fun!

You Can't Hate Yourself

I have been REALLY busy. Demands for my time and energy have stretched me thin. Well not actually, I am actually being stretched fat. My children have needed me, my creative urges consume any scraps of time, I am drowning in clutter in my home and still haven't recovered from a long summer of travel. I am running on fumes and still have so much on my plate that needs my attention. I realized the other night, after consuming a substantial quantity of raw cookie dough that was part of a dinner I was preparing for my daughter's first grade teacher who had just given birth to a new baby, that I was not allowed to hate myself, for A. Eating sugar, which I have been trying to give up, and B. Induldging in the forbidden substance in such a gluttonous fashion. I wanted to hate myself. I was leaning toward the old habit of self-hatred, which is a set up for more "bad" behavior. No matter how appalling the act was, the thing I could not allow myself to do was to hate myself for the weakness that defines me as human. It is really the thing that binds us. We inevitably, on a daily basis make mistakes, do things wrong, hurt people's feelings, trip up in our goals, show ourselves as vulnerable and imperfect. Not one of us is immune to the pitfalls of the human condition. Some mistakes are huge, and made very public, some are tiny and known only to us, our little secret, like the cookie dough. Having grown up with recovering alcoholics, I KNOW about making mistakes and how important it is to find compassion and forgiveness first for yourself, so you can make amends where they are required to be made. I can only imagine the effect of every earthly individual coming to terms with their imperfect nature, and offering compassion, first to themselves, then to all around them. Can you imagine the power in that ? Whatever you have done, whatever it is, I hope you will forgive yourself and let it be considered a lesson in being human. It will not be the last mistake you make, but it may be the last one of that kind. I can't say that I won't eat raw cookie dough again. I can say that I will not hate myself if I do indulge, for that would ruin the sweetness of the experience.

MANIFESTATION

Today, I am purely me, full of hope, love, compassion. I am tolerant, I am forgiving. I appreciate all that is here for me to experience. I am a vessel for the receipt and deliverence of abundance. I am not attatched to things, people, outcomes in the future or events of the past. I am rich, whole and so filled with love and life that I can heal the earth with my heart, with my intent. I am powerful in the most gentle way.

Hooked on the Claw

They have something to teach. It's something I have been willing to study my whole life. How to nap, how to ask for what you want, how to be persistent in the asking, how to say," no, I don't care for that", and without hesitation, they know how to say, "pet me!" I have always been attracted to cats. I have five. They are like magnets to my iron, pulling me away from my task, drawn to their exposed belly, their sleepy smile. They know how to savor the sunlight and the leafy, dappled shade. They know how to be clean and how to get really dirty. This cat, the one who's paw clutches my latest belly chain creation, sleeps in my lavendar garden. I pick him up and he smells like my favorite flower, clean, bright, honest. I can't really explain it other than a pure fascination, a lifelong attraction to the feline form, an admiration and a love. Like my attraction to gemstones, I suspect both can be therapeutic when received with an open heart.

Breathe in JOY

My sisters and I created magic last weekend. We envisioned, planned and executed a weekend in New York City to surprize our mother in honor of her sixtieth birthday. We made a miracle happen. We found care for our eleven children. We financed our trip by manifesting the cash. We experienced NYC without blisters on our feet, without rain, without terrorism. We were gifted with cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery, Grey Gardens, the musical and hot corned beef from the Broadway Deli. We ran, laughing, down the hall of the hotel with bras on our heads, flirted with bus drivers and saw orbs in the photos we took in the subway tunnels. It truly was a magical weekend for me with my sisters and my mother and her friends. I am rich. I am full. I am satisfied and I am happy. I invite you to manifest as much fun or more for yourself. Tell me what you come up with.

Information

I was recently told that I don't ask for help enough from my angels. It's true. I don't ask for help. From anyone. This, of course, is not good. I was told that my angels are there, waiting, willing, happy to help, at any time, but, I have to ask. I have to ask. I was told that I get communications from my angels in the form of chills down my spine, shivers, electricity, goose bumps. I took this information and have been applying it. It's worth asking just for the feeling of electricity surging up and down my spine in response to a question I have asked from my angels. Another person told me that I have a lot of angels supporting me. Over twenty. A literal support team. I have decided that I am going to engage their talents more frequently than I have been. I am going to trust their abilities and go at it with full knowledge that the team is on it. I can and will do so much more with my angel support staff in action, that I'm letting the stubborn independence go, in exchange for the angelic team approach. I figure, that if I have that many souls connected to me that I must have some pretty important work to do and I'd best get my ego out of the way and get to it. I asked for financial flow. I am getting it. I asked for direction and instructions on how I work with my stones. I am getting it. I am open to receiving it. It is my job now to remind you to do the same thing. Imagine that you have a support team devoted solely to you. Imagine that their greatest happiness comes in loving and helping you to do your life's work. Imagine that you can acomplish ANYTHING. Know that you are heard. Know that you are adored. Know that you are integral to this planet at this time. Know that. Feel the shivers? Ask a question, ask for guidence. Feel the shivers?

You CAN Figure It Out

Physics has been on my mind lately. I've been helping Quinlan, my freshman ward with her homework and re-living the science that quantifies and predicts. In our session this morning, I boiled it down to simple steps, "write down what you know, then write down what you need to find out, then, figure out how to get there and remain willing to get there in an indirect way"- meaning using potentially more than one equation. She caught on and beautifully plowed through five or six problems with quiet resolution. I was excited. I said, "see how satisfying physics can be?" It really is easy at this level. Newton and Hawking, Feynman and Einstein and all the other physicists of our past, have derived all of the relationships which lead to the simple explanations that we call formulae. I know you are bored. You are tuning out right now. You think, "I don't get it" or some other bit of nonsense. The epiphany for me came in the simple instructions I gave to Quinlan. Write down what you know. Write down what you want to know. Figure out how to get there. This formula can work for almost any situation in life to get you from where you are to where you want to go. Anything. There are no limits. The power of intention works because you put that intention out there in your actions, in your beliefs and in your encounters with others towards a particular goal. Think about the guy in Canada who traded a red paperclip for a house (after many trades and some choice items for barter). His intentions were clear. He asked for what he wanted in every transaction. He modeled what intention and belief and hard work can do for you. He inspired hope. I also wish to inspire hope. The hardest part is knowing what you want or what you need. You have more than you think to work with in order to get it. Trust me. Go for it.

There is no Right Way

The first time I took physics in college I struggled. My professor was a young indian man who solved physics problems on his dry erase board as if it was so obvious that the problem should be solved the way he solved it. He taught with haste, annoyance and seemingly, just because he had to. I tried to learn by following his steps, by doing it his way, by memorizing the procedure that he so casually presented to his class. I didn't learn. I achieved a less than passing grade. I felt mighty stupid and quite the failure. Fortunately, my university had a repeat/delete option for students who wished for that D or F to be taken out of their GPA equation. I repeated physics and learned much more than just physics in the process. I'm not sure if it was my next professor's passion for teaching or my own maturity, but I figured out that in physics, there was more than one way to solve a problem. I had to come up with my own methods of breaking down the problem, solving each component as I understood it and arriving at the conclusion my own way. I didn't have to use the same technique as anyone else, as long as I understood what needed to be done and came up with a plan for getting there. I ended up with the top grade in a class of eighty some students and a renewed love for physics.

This lesson has stuck with me. I am a problem solver and don't give up easily. I rarely back away from a difficult situation or a seemingly impossible task. I tend to say "yes" even when I don't know how something is going to come together or where the financial backing will come from. I find things that are lost because I will not give up looking . The missing Costco card eluded me for a few days. I took a break from looking for it and ran across it when I was looking for Kieran's school pictures in the pile on my desk. The Costco card was chamoflauged on the top of my giant, illustrated oxford dictionary. Kind of like when I'm star gazing and my peripheral vision picks up the smudge of the andromeda galaxy, I had to stop looking for it to find it.

When I posted this picture, the story I have just written came to mind. The centerstone in this belly chain is Tiger's Eye. Here is what Judy Hall has to say about this stone: Tiger's Eye assists in accomplishing goals, recognizing inner resources and promoting clarity of intention. Tiger's Eye is excellent for people who are spaced out or uncommitted. It grounds and facilitates manifestation of the will. Tiger's Eye heals issues of self-worth, self criticism and blocked creativity. It aids in recognizing one's talents and abilities and, conversely, faults that need to be overcome.

Bursting out of the Box

This is love. Pure and sweet. When permitted, invited and encouraged to do what I love, love pours out of me and I create beauty. O.K., I didn't "create" this stone. The earth and time did, but I saw it, picked it up, bought it and strung it together with all these other exquisite stones. I do believe this is moss agate but I'm re-naming it "celestial agate" because it looks like a galaxy to me, or the earth from space. The secret, I'm beginning to understand, of my joy is this. I need to and should do at leat one thing a day to stir my soul and make me happy. Today it was creating this beautiful belly chain for Chizuko and another amazing piece for her mother. On Friday, it was painting a watercolor picture of the Santa Barbara Mission on the Mission lawn with my children. Side by side, we created together. I could do that every day.

I am beginning to realize that when life situations make us believe we are failures or that we have not achieved, maybe it is all just a misinterpretation. Maybe the "box" we are trying to fit into just isn't big enough to hold us. Our spirit needs to "fail" in order to be permitted to grow to its potential, to expand to its limitless dimension. When we are forced to alter our course, we are granted the gift of a new perspective. What if this lifetime is just like a ride at Disneyland, and when it's over you say, "that was scary", or "that made me sick", or " that was fun! Let's do it again!"- and you can look at what your life is at this very moment and appreciate it for the sheer experience of having it- what will it make you change? How will it lighten your heart to know that there is NO FAILURE? There are no mistakes. There is only you and the gift of this moment.

Losing My Mind, (among other things)

My Costco card just DISSAPPEARED. It was in my hand 60, maybe 90 seconds ago when I punched the numbers into the Costco website to create my "list" of items I hope to obtain during the next cupon cycle. Hey, you can save a lot during those prescribed times for buying toilet paper and toothpaste. In this case, it was a new Dell laptop, as the one I'm typing on will no longer communicate with any printer, especially the new one my husband lovingly purchased for me in March. I had been waiting for the old printer to really die before I put it into retirement. It had become tempermental about taking in the paper and could, on most occasions, be lovingly, patiently coaxed to perform. I hooked up the new printer in order to "up" the quality of some business cards I needed to print and never imagined that I would log eight to ten hours of my precious time trying to get my old (three years, this March) laptop to communicate with my new printer. It got to the point that I knew I could bring the entire hard drive down if I kept on trying. Which led me to the discussion with my husband, the biggest investor in my business, of my dire need for a new computer. Having put the word out, I was only somewhat surprised that the Costco coupon book that arrived in the mail today included a coupon for up to $250 off of a new Dell laptop. I eagerly logged on to the Costco website, which I have not, up till now, been a member. I filled in all my personal info, my mailing address and phone number, my business name and password which led me to the card number, which I copied from the card I extracted from my wallet, buried deep in the well of my purse. There was, I confess, a moment of distraction, when my six year old daughter came to me, climbed up the side of my bar chair and pulled herself into my lap, pestering me with demands about swimming with dolphins someday at Sea World. I don't believe in making promises that I can't keep, so I said that it was "unlikely" that we would swim with dolphins at Sea World. In my defense, I did throw out Hawaii as a possibility, knowing that swimming a lap with dolphins was more likely to happen that way. She stormed off, ranting that there were no dolphins to swim with in Hawaii and that we had already been there once anyway. It was then that I started looking for my precious Costco card, and up till now, my heart sinks as I report that I CAN NOT FIND IT! After searching through my wallet, purse and all adjacent drawers and surfaces multiple times, it came to me that my sweet, innocent, dolphin-loving daughter might somehow be linked to the dissappearance of my Costco card. I questioned her gently, then firmly, using the tactic of presumed guilt. I even forced her to help me look for it. To no avail.
The curse of my experience in motherhood is that I am forced to multi-task and my brain is not always up to the job. More than once I have been engaged in witty conversations on the phone and put some item that requires refrigeration into a cupboard. I have a system of organized chaos that, if left undisturbed, usually allows me to retrieve important documents and papers at will. It is the expansion of my creative spirit and the organizational requirements of motherhood that drive me to this state of frustration. My fight for a calm and serene life fuel my inner diologue of, "that was a bad picture anyway", besides, there's always more where that came from.

Serenity in the Chaos

You try and you try to gets things done, to complete, to achieve, to have success, but there are always, delays, mishaps, rodblocks, hurdles and unforseen mud holes that you find yourself falling into. The day, of course, is not long enough to feed and clothe the children, feed and clothe myself, unload the dishwasher so I can load it, clean up the kitchen so I can cook, feed the ten animals breakfast before lunchtime, log on to my e-mail, log on to the wesites where I have an anticipated presence, create things on the computer, create jewelry at my desk, print out stone properties, package and mail things out, write bills and mail them on time, listen to voicemail, answer the phone, answer the cell phone, break up the fighting children, feed them lunch, take them to local spots of enrichment, rotate the laundry, unload and load the dishwasher, pick up the debris field in every room, have a meaningful relationship, be a good friend, think of others, make sure I'm taking care of myself, write this blog, take pictures, get pictures printed, put the prints in albums, update the baby books, clean out the closets, prepare for a garage sale, take a nap, quiet my mind.....That's not even the end of the list, but it's a start. I know this is a common issue among women, who tend to have a knack for menally cataloging things that need to be done, tended to, addressed, dealt-with. It must be part of the double X that makes us acutely aware of the list of things to do and again, that XX makes us feel a twinge of responsibility in making sure it all gets done. Great.

Today, I share with you some new pieces (that can be seen on www.terracelestejewelry.com) created with simplicity (and men) in mind. My hope for you, as well as for me, is that we find all of our chores completed by some fairy or angel, husband or child, or, that what remains undone for now does not irritate us or nag us with it's incompleteness. Let us be serene in the chaos.

Loud and Clear

My throat had been hurting BAD for over two weeks. Bad enough for me to see my internist, who cultured me for strep but said it was probably allergies. To swallow was painful and my voice was beginning to reverbrate. My friend, who had seen success with reiki, scheduled me an appointment. I met with Liesel, who, with her tender touch, worked my chakra system channelling universal, healing energy through my meridian. My throat chakra was misaligned. No surprise. I was told that I needed to speak my anger. "But I can't- I don't have anger- only love, compassion, empathy..." Tears began to stream down my face. Fuck. I have anger. Unexpressed, of course. God damn it. I hate anger. I hate annoyance. I hate intolerance. I hate the weakness that comes with these shallow emotions. I hate having them. O.K. , I was willing, am willing to admit my imperfections and express my (cough) anger. Ohh, that means fessing up to my deep, old wounds from my childhood when my father left my sisters and I with only a child support check and holiday cards signed "love, Dad" to mark his paternal contribution. He had two more children, whom I can truthfully say that I have slept under the same roof with fewer than fourteen times. These children went on family vacations and had their father present at graduations and important occasions. Not that I am jelous of them. I am not. I am only dissapointed in my father for choosing to step aside and partake not in a difficult life as a father to three beautiful, strong women. As a step mother, I know first hand that divorce makes parenting far more challenging than it already can be. It is a challenge for those of us willing to get down and dirty to stand by our children, for their sake, even if it makes us uncomfortable, uneasy, unsettled, unhappy. Even if it makes us cry, we should be there for our kids. He has no excuse, he should have been there for us. He wasn't. I'm angry. But maybe a little bit less, now that I've written the words. I am healing. Using my voice. Speaking loud and clear. Even if the words aren't pretty.
By the way, my throat doesn't hurt any more. Not for eight days, since my session with Liesel.

Presence

It was sometime four or five thousand years ago that people created this stone circle. Its center stone and two outer circle stones line up with the arc of the sun during the summer solstice. It meant something, served a purpose, brought people together in ceremony or reverance. In life. We have but a short time to make our mark. We all do. Some of us do it loudly, and boldly, knowing we will leave an impression. Some of us are quiet and stealth in our passing through life, but pass nonetheless. We have presence- NOW. We breathe. We have the opportunity to create, to feel, to experience or to create experiences. We are ALIVE. We have this gift. Do you feel it? Your skin tingles with the touch of your own hand. If nothing else, we have the wealth of this moment. This breath. This opportunity. What would THEY give for what you have? This opportunity. What will you make of your today?