Airport Musings from Surreal Birds

at the airport in a cozy private purple faux leather curvy couch type thing after sucking down a delicious nitro cold brew from earth penny coffee (it’s opposite day). feeling surreal and sometimes that’s for the best. when you listen with all your heart to story after story about extreme distress. being a therapist is a lesson for the therapist too. in how to contain all of the stories of pain and suffering in balance with honoring tragedy and knowing suffering is the mud ball turning soul into a pearl. this world is really fucked up and isn’t it interesting how we have this natural feeling that life should be more just and fair and happy and healthy for all? even among nature’s continuously dangerous daily display among all of her beauty too? it’s the way it’s supposed to be and yet it’s all messed up too. ran into this guy i had one date with two years ago off a dating site. he came up to me at PCC with a hand written note asking to meet again with no agenda, only authentic conversation. the date was an explosion of anger from us both. he wanted to dive right into the ethereal and i wanted to be regular. he wanted to see me as a soulmate right out of the gate and i wanted to find out where he grew up and what he ate for lunch. both of us were lonely and seeking that special love but it was a clash of personality that led to a heated argument and him walking out of me. i recall feeling like he was trying to put me in a box and it angered me. projections bring out my inner dragon, i wont let any man mansplain me into a box. i will argue till i drive you crazy, mansplainer. this time he seemed gentle and maybe more grounded but i don’t want to call him. he showed up as a message about how to be in conflict. about how to allow others to think what they think but also understanding how the animal rises in defense of the sacred. we are all on the edge of our seats like those monkeys with bright red butts. anyhow, got me thinking more about romantic love and how i seek harmony. libra moon harmony. ease and beauty and romance. i choose who i mate with. i may not choose who i love but i choose whom i choose to mate with. i say no to any man putting me on a witness stand or trying to box me and make me his perfect projection. i want to be loved for me and have the freedom to be me. i want to love him and give him the freedom to be him. period. i cultivate this art. i cultivate this path. i cultivate a freedom in me that flies away whenever i need. and i do. always. never stick around for sticky love. karmic overtones. heaviness. because i spend my life in the darkness maybe and want my personal life more light. blah blah blah. words. i am detached from attaching to my reactions. i am attached to detaching from them. i am having revelations. seeing my own projections. rising above. aquarian bird girl. mommy is a bird too.

Pluto Retrograde Blog

i don’t know what to say. it’s later in the evening but still light out. i am in my robe. that’s a mode. red and soft, windows wide open, watching the people walk by. i used to have a view of the city skyline facing west high up in a third floor nest. now i peer out from the ground floor in the center of it all. but a quiet and elegant center with more class. not so young. not party town. no more floss and one shoe abandoned on the curb when i walk out the front door. though no part of the hill is without the chaos the mentally ill and homeless add to the bougie we have money crowd. and of course there are still the artists and lgbtqia peeps and one thread of that old school vibe sewn through the well to do who enjoy the finer things. last night i dreamed about learning how to help people process being diagnosed with cancer. so intense. talking about our dead mothers. one man avoiding grief. one woman saturating in it because that is her nature. to fully immerse and feel. to explore, express, and release. the intense priestess among many who live light hearted and/or avoiding. i say and/or because being light hearted is not avoiding. avoiding can be done with a light or heavy heart. people avoid because they have trouble processing the intensity of the feelings. this is my abode. i feel safe in the storms. storm is my territory. i don’t have a heavy heart like covered in wet blankets. (used to). i have a heavy heart like winter soil drenched in snow. you’ll never hear me tell you to think positive or to stop complaining. although, too much negativity is suffocating. i am light and heavy. i am learning to let go of the negative mind by not indulging it. i quite enjoy light hearted people. i don’t like when they preach just as they don’t want me preaching to them. compliments are harmonious. i crave the light heart to compliment my heavy heart. but two heavy hearts and two light hearts work too. variety. i am just riffing. been thinking about people in general. how we identify and promote ourselves. america is a toddler. there is a big difference between feeling and emotional reactivity. the former comes from the well within. the latter is a reaction to something in the external. so much stimulation. i like chaos and dark places. this is why i like bars. i am drawn to the ambience and i enjoy being in the shadows. always have. when i was younger i fantasized about the most urban decay type of existences. we all have our preferences. since getting older i like more serenity though. my apartment is so serene. i think the air quality may not be the best but i make do. i am going to vegas in a few. family visit that is both hard and wonderful. death changes you. but then i think of him. is he changing since his mom died even though he’s avoiding grieving? do those who avoid grief transform from it too? can you petrify the personality and freeze in time? i would like him to return to himself. it’s this big feeling. my feelings are big since mom died. i feel very alone in life right now even though i am surrounded by love. it’s this existential aloneness. i am the only one who feels what i feel. we each contain a certain amount of inner isolation. we just do. it’s part of being human. i am learning to sink into this truth. some evenings i put on my red robe early in the evening and make my way back home inside of me. no outward expression. no expectations. no flaring nervous system. no light and clinks of glasses. i love night time. i am wanting to enjoy it more these days. i love the early morning too. both and. cats and dogs. give me more than one choice. except when it comes to romantic love. then i am an all in with one guy at a time heart. why? i think because people are so intense. everyone is intense. i cannot imagine merging with more than one intense man at a time. also, i am fiercely loyal and romantically possessive. also, who got time for more than one? many do but not me. my time is filled. time moves too fast. this blog is too long. too is such a judgmental word. ok, stop now. don’t edit. post. pluto is looking inward now.

Notes on Romantic Love

saw this post on twitter about people getting less picky with choosing mates, the older they get. hm. i feel the opposite is true for me. i have a ton more self worth than i had in the past and so i am more discerning. i could only be with a man who is emotionally available, which seems to narrow down the pool by….a lot. i realize it’s important for me to be with a man who is sensitive and romantic. doesn’t mean he can’t be a dude, a bloke, a mate, a guy, i like the masculine energy….but there are those men who are more sensitive than others, more tuned into feelings, more romantic. i watched the most beautiful movie on netflix last night called, “a little chaos” with kate winslet, one of my favorite actresses. the romance in this movie spoke to my heart. the movie spoke to my heart. i suppose because it speaks to my softness, my sensitivity, my feminine energy. i don’t want to have to be the strong masculine force in a relationship. we are all different. one of my best male friends enjoys being the more feminine one and likes a strong masculine presence in a female. i just so happen to fit a very traditional norm in a city that seeks to abolish the norm. i often try to abolish the norm in many areas of life but when it comes to romantic love, i am as normal as it gets. i am cis. i am straight. i am feminine and like the man to do the pursuing. i am romantic. i am monogamous. i am good with nurturing and emotions. and so i empathize with norms and tradition too. i am always about embracing both sides to all stories. not a pick a side type of gal. maybe it’s my libra moon. i am differentiated too. i don’t need you to be like me to approve of you. i don’t need my man to be like me to be with him either. but i do need compatibility. i realize (again) how my heart is romantic and sensitive by nature and how good i have gotten at covering that up in a protective personality of cutting intelligence, sarcasm, and pragmatism. yuck. sick of it. please, mr., give me the opportunity to leave my head, drop my protective queen of swords shell and reveal my true heart. queen of cups all the way. i am hungry for love, pleasure, fun. i am hungry for all versions of it. of course, true love is number one. i have no more need to play any fields, have any more lesson learning boyfriends, or experience the variety. i am ready to commit for life. at the same time, i don’t have narrow vision. i am open to lovers, boyfriends, one night stands but what i am not open to anymore is emotionally unavailable men. men who use me to gratify themselves. men i am not really attracted to but rationalize my way into them. shallow connections made up of mutual projections. all that stuff. i want emotional connection, romance, affection, laughter, merging, be it short term or long term. it’s not how long the connection lasts, it’s the quality of the connection. the new me does not need a life partner, she only hopes for one. the me now no longer projects my animus into men past the initial attraction stage, as we all do. the projections get us in the game. when they fall love first enters and says, “will you let me stay?”. i have lost love i wanted to hold onto and it still burns and confuses. i have loved whom i cannot have. i have been loved by whom i do not love back. i have experienced the plethora (annoying word?) even if most of my time is spent alone because i am so picky. but my pickiness is not fickle. i could care less about abs or wealth or accolade or wit. it’s all about the emotional and mental  connection. demi and sapio. there are a ton of cute men but only a few that arouse me. i could not fathom more than one at a time as one is already a lot. polyamory is way too much for me but i respect it. i respect the variety of everythignness. there must be somebody for me. tired of wanting and waiting and craving and abstaining for lessons and growth and blah blah blah. i am ready to dive into the pleasure of the felt experience.  what are you looking for? do you have or want? or are you torn?

Cavolade is a Made Up Word

magic. love. warmth. giving. silky soft seattle air. lake washington. tarot cards. candles. difficult messages. all go together. writing in snippets. tower card explosions. feeling happy. life changing quick. the sorrow i usually feel and have felt my whole life finds sanctuary in this new happiness. it’s not about replacing one with the other. sorrow for the broke world and all the fucked up shit and down trodden souls, sorrow for all that was lost in my own life due to what happened to me, sorrow for way some have and some do not–always slaying me. i will not dishonor sorrow by trying to get rid of it. i am sorrow’s indigo kid. i will blaze the blue fire proudly like a lion protecting all that is sacred. i am the wolf unable to abandon my pack. humans are my pack. i feel too much. i feel it all. i feel happy. happiness that is not the opposite of sorrow. i have come to understand now that happiness is one thing and one thing only. being my true self. true self blossoming. blue lily storm. it’s taken so long to get here and yet no time at all. it’s not about time but i honor time in the north where stories are birthed from the past and move forward into the future. i honor my ancestors and the fear of concentration camps that runs through my blood as a result. i honor the oppressed feminine and burst forth as an expressed feminine. i blossom to heal the world. this is the solution. this is the solution that brings results. it is our duty to blossom into our true self, this will heal the world. saturn rules my chart. saturn is the great lesson bringer. wish i was one of those full time love and lighters sometimes as all heavy hearters wish but i also honor the heavy heart and understand that i am a mouth piece of lessons and messages to help correct what is out of tune. nobody wants to hear an out of tune guitar play, not even you. tuning is romantic but is hard and requires balance, commitment and discipline. the flowers bloom without all of that. but humans are complex. we are myriads. i love people. i love souls. i love delving into them and reading all the details like news stories and myths of hope. i see those who are petrified by time and hurt. i see the way people choose comfort and safety over true self and how that puts a shellac around their soul and makes them move slower and need more food, drink, smoke, sex, shopping, accolade or whatever. me too, me too. no mountain top for this girlio. i am just like you. i call all of it chocolate cake. when you seek your worth outside the self. when you seek love outside yourself when no love is inside. no matter what it is, is chocolate cake. i gave the wounded little one inside of me to durga to take and hold in her amethyst caves and fill with love. solutions. capricorn north node. saturn ruling the chart. solutions. sure, i envy anais and henry and their carefree boho for life lifestyle. i wish i could go back there and then. but you know, also reading henry in tropic of cancer, it’s quite gross. bed bug and sexual disease gross. gross. and anais, did she have any love of her own? no, she lived in all the men, fully. i don’t judge but that’s not for me but i envy what i am not. envy lightly. not in a possessive way. i easily admit my shadow so it diffuses. having a sense of humor is key. admitting is relieving. we all have envy and lust. we all want to break the rules and sabotage trust. we are immoral and crave what we want when we want it. power feels good. i could bury my face in all that is wrong with saliva dripping from my tongue. let us stop being so afraid of the shadow. let us stop focusing only on pastel pink. let us drop the judgement and have a real deep and dark think. we are human, let it sink. we are human, we contain multitudes. we are human, and i like it. i also hate it. i also say words that don’t stick and don’t turn words into swords but keep them in their place like dandelion fuzz. the one eternal aspect is love pouring through everything.

so mote it be.

Radio Stream to the Other Side of the Veil

mom, this little girl in my dream last night said you were struggling in the fires of hell. i knew she was indoctrinated into christian religion and hence believing in that myth and that you really were not in hell but in the dream, i wondered if you were in fact, struggling. are you?

the dream the night before, of the snake coming out of my belly button, that was about my grief. a friend gave me the message and it resonated. the pain of letting go of the pain of losing you is an entirely new kind of pain. because it means letting go more. and also the pain of being connected to you and to all of the women before you is painful too because every woman in our bloodline lived an oppressed life.

it’s no wonder that every cell in this being of mine is determined to live my true self. i am not here to survive and if it came down to survival only, i would have no problem leaving this place. my soul is more at home on the other side anyhow. i am here to heal myself and the ancestral line and to live fully blossomed as true self. if i live fully blossomed as true self, i heal myself and you and all the ancestors seven generations back and those yet to come. the snake represents this.

i went through my heuristic research journal from grad school when i did my shadow work. in that messy colorful journal you were first diagnosed with cancer. before diagnosis i was writing about how you were saying that you felt like you were dying, how you feared you had cancer. we all minimized your psychic intuition. you knew. the women in our family are keenly psychic but it’s been repressed by the way things are. you fucking knew, mom. in the journal i was tormented by your pain. i could not differentiate from you. this link between us is so big and strong and like a snake.

the light is the bright excitement of success. of saying no to the temptation to fall into the vault of despair and collect droplets of sorrow like that death cab for cutie line. i am feeling happy since wednesday. happy to serve people and be love. happy to feel a sense of home in my neighborhood. happy to think that being me is actually enough. i am accepting my flaws. i am facing aging with some grace. how the years pass.

i keep waking up too early. insanely early. four am. going through my instagram pictures and realizing i am doing this cause of you, mom. i see the selfie i took in vegas on the last trip before your diagnosis. when we all thought you were just depressed. when you knew you had cancer before the doctors knew. i was a completely different person back then. only 2 years ago. i was much younger in my emotional self. naive to the pain of loss. wrapped up in the wounds of my past. still living halfway in a dream world. now, i am fully here in the present with a heart turned solid gold and knowing the deepest loss i may ever know. you, mom. you.

i wrote in the shadow journal that we are the same soul. i used to say that. because even though we could not be more opposite in our characters, beneath we both felt the same kind of pain and experienced the same emotional sensitivity. but i am the strong one, emotionally. even though i am weak on the material plane. not good at making money or finding a lasting mate or owning a home,. stuff like that. stuff this culture values above all.

i won’t settle for anything less than true love if i am going to commit to a man. he is real and i will be with him and if not, i will die believing i will. but i won’t marry just to marry or commit to not be alone. maybe i will never marry, i mean really, who cares? i don’t care about marriage or owning a home. but i could do both. i could do anything. all i am truly committed to is being a voice of healing and love. the rest is open to interpretation. the rest is emergent. i don’t have a conceptual plan. i follow the organic flow of each moment leading into the next.

i think back to my last ex and how much i clung to him as my home when you were on your way toward death. i was trying to replace you with him. it wasn’t conscious. i was scared and feeling so alone. lately, i don’t feel alone. i don’t seek home in a man. i don’t seek home in anything outside my self. i am unsure how i got here other than making the strong intention to get here. within is my base. if i get to make a man home than great but i am home within myself, first. my dad made my mom home. i mean, most people make their mates home. it’s natural. i am doing what is unnatural.

spiritual questing is an evolutionary thing. consciousness is evolving from animal to soul, it’s not a dichotomy, it’s an art project. i am going against the stream. it’s hard. i still want to have sex and affection. i love touch more than i love food. but i cannot control the latter and i long for it in a deep way. not the shallow way this culture treats sex as being about topical and specific self-centered pleasure. the animal in me may not need marriage but she needs soulful connection of skin, heart, soul. anyhow, mom, you already know this.

i feel like i am the one struggling in hell. but i am not struggling in hell anymore. are you? is dad? why did the little girl tell me you were in hell? is that me worried about you? mom, i was cocky. i though that due to my psychic gift, i could easily reach you once you passed on. this is not the case. i miss you and you feel so gone, so far away. i am haunted by way time passes and humbled once again.

i do hear you give me messages all the time in my head, almost like my own thought but i know it’s you cause i hear your voice and you advise me with the grace death brings. like right now, you say be happy and stop focusing on you and on sorrow. i know. i will. i am. because of you, i am. because i feel you free of your human suit knowing how fast life is and how happiness is of immense value and entirely possible. i know it’s possible cause i am feeling happy right now. i love you.

Sun in Taurus Insomnia Induced Words

the sky is blue this morning and i am not using capital letters, returning to the full lower case as i prefer the aesthetic of this form of writing. poetry. birds chirping. insomnia. woke up right when the sun moved from aries to taurus. tossed and turned. slowly, my life is filling up with service to others through my work. i could panic and create a story that the same thing will happen again that happened in the past. where i became all service and had no life of my own, causing me to flee to missoula to be alone enough to find myself and and heal. that was twelve years ago and i have healed. this time, i will find the balance, even if i don’t have a full two days off, i don’t work eight hour days. and two of my jobs are also hang outs. it’s not like the nine to five thing. i am learning something. i am learning to not divide myself up inside like a pie chart. it’s not about work time and not work time. my self stays put in both roles. in the service role, i focus on the other but i am still present inside and happy to be present and alive. this allows me to seamlessly move from work to not work. work for me is service to the soul in others and it’s pleasurable for me. even when it get burned out. it’s a form of pleasure because i love connecting with others deeply. it’s not about fixing people. it’s not about wearing a lab coat or being on a mountain top. it’s about deeply connecting with people, having a lot of experience and being far enough on my own healing path to emanate results. results are real. hope is alive. point being, the seamlessness is important to me. i must not compartmentalize. this also means not feeling bad about having a drink or two. i have always put totally sober people on a pedestal, thinking they are so bad ass. but i enjoy having the ability to have a few drinks and i enjoy sitting in the dark ambient underworld bar and being in the chaos of the night. it does not make me not a healer. healers aren’t only holly hobbies or noxema woman (such an old reference). plus, i cannot eat hardly any foods and if i can get away with drinks, i certainly will. i miss beer. i miss bread. i miss olives. last night i dreamed about a snake coming out of my belly button. i was screaming at my friend in horror, “get it out!” i need to pull cards on this shadow message. i love people.  i love this word. it’s time for that ancestral snake to leave this form.

Full Moon Libra Stream…

Full moon Libra happening right now. I woke up at 4 am, right when it was about to go exact. This full moon is my moon sign, so extra special. Extra potent. I feel there has been a shift in my grieving journey. It happened as Mercury moved from Pisces to Aries on Wednesday. My ambition returned but it did not return in the same way. An older more true version of ambition returned. The ambition to serve people. The opposite of burn out. The feeling of needing to give what I have. To everybody. The love vibe ambition. It gets channeled mostly through being a therapist, tarot reader, painter, and writer but I don’t limit myself. I want to show up with this love in every moment. I want to emanate love. It’s a spiritual sorta love. Not that I don’t have all the human desires to love too, I do…but the spiritual love woke back up in me. I uncurled out of my grief bubble and faced the world anew a few days ago. The world I love. How could this be? The self I was a long time ago, when the wounds were searing through me like lava tracks and lightning storms, when I was out of control, self hating, and in the grips of the wet blanket of depression, I also always felt this striking pure love for people, for this world. As I healed and came more into my body through the years, that striking love became more about how I can pragmatically enter this world. Which sorta messed me up. I suppose I had been judging myself all along. Love is strong and yet the slightest of judgement upon it and it will walk away, not stick around, let you have your hey day with judging. The love never left, it just dimmed and became self focused….as if this love needs me to stay wild to stay potent. I love people and this world spiritually when I remain wild. This is a fact of my temperament. I did not think I could be professional and wild for the longest time. But recently, I understood in my heart that the institutionalized persona sold by the matrix is not true to soul, not true to self. I don’t need to wear a lab coat to be a healer. I don’t need to be perfect. Basic knowings but for the heart to know is quite the journey. I had a think about it first. Realized it’s a bunch of crap. That I have solid boundaries built over many years and my wisdom and assistance and voice is needed in this world and I can be me and being me is who I need to be. As a teacher of mine used to say, “you are not a design flaw.”. The wild in me is the woman who reads tarot and gives therapy and paints and writes books and holds five different jobs and connects to many different circles at once and likes to sit in dark chaotic bars but is not a problem drinker and appreciates the night life like an underworld appreciator and like the crow and the vulture she is medicine in the darkness, she eats the darkness for dinner and she operates well in chaos and prefers it which is why she likes the city life and why in her personal life, she is incredibly orderly and organized down to her exact three autoimmune paleo meals a day and her sacred spiritual rituals. she is not noxema girl on her yoga mat but she has a yoga practice she does mostly nude to feel her body in the dusky light of dawn. she is not all daylight and sunshine. she is moonlight and shadow. she is complicated like any stormy system but easy like sunday morning. she believes emanating her true nature is as healing for others as being a strong container to hold others and focus on their true selves as it takes one to know one. she is pioneer. she sees every single soul as manifest destiny she wants to get to know. she loves the soul and sees it inside of every persona and threat response. she mines for the soul. she pulls the golden soul out of the dirt of the conditioned traumatized or down trodden personality and helps it come out and shine. she is a soul shiner yes that’s right. and now that mom is on the other side she feels this even more because mom is now a spirit guide free of her earthly burden. she is talking about herself in third person because the detachment gives a different voice, a more poetic voice, a certain freedom. she embraces this present moment which is a constant recipe she stirs and eats and delivers. she is in her red robe burning rose incense and drinking lemon water with flower essences in it. she is gonna pull cards next and align with the day. she is ready to serve and shine at the same time, the truly libra moon way. she stopped using capital letters…

Letting the Words Unravel

I am pretty sure almost nobody reads this blog which makes it easier to let go and allow myself to blog again more freely, without playing the role of a therapist or any other role for that matter. If I suddenly die, there will be an account of life here. I wish I had not erased the past twenty years of blogging. I tend to get rid of everything on the regular. I don’t like to hold onto the past. Right when I typed this a tiny sparrow looked at me through the cafe window. Mom, is that you? The past. I do hold on quite tightly to certain feelings and narratives I am currently sacrificing on the table of spirit as Chiron opposes Venus and Pluto in my natal chart. Goodbye, story of lack. Goodbye, story of not being good enough. Goodbye, story of not belonging. Goodbye to you, past. I am feeling a deep releasing of this. My mom, the sparrow or cardinal or eagle even, reminds me. I feel her on the other side. She arrived in a journey I took in my Reiki session yesterday. Mom, Ester, Peggy, Dotty, Diane, and Janet were all there, along with older ancestors I don’t know about. They were supporting me. I feel them all. It’s just a feeling. Not like watching a movie or anything. But my feelings are strong. Like espresso. Like strong hairy man arms. How I still crave to be held and to meld and to merge and be part of a twosome in body, heart, soul. Mind maybe not so much. It’s better to have differences that create plenty of space to be an individual, to grow, to learn, to balance out. Writing in all one paragraph feels so good. It’s like an exhale. I feel the need to continually exhale these days. I have collected so much. There is so much going on inside this psyche. So many components, richness, conflict, courage, unsureness, openness, wavering, doubt, confidence, love, worry, trepidation, caution, sensuality, passion, dreaming. I wont relieve the chaos with order or dopamine hits of attention, food, drink, or whatever and at the same time, the animal longs for connection, belonging, and to settle into long term making and mating and visioning. Ambition may not be present cause of grief but inspiration arrives in deluges. We went to see Clueless last night at Central Cinema. Love that place. Kitch and warm and nostalgic. It’s the little things. Next week is Monty Python. Seattle provides a ton of culture and entertainment. I don’t always want it. I sometimes need it. Need out of the kaleidoscopic chaos within. I don’t know what else to say. I feel a bit blank, dense, fatigued. Kicked my ass with my yoga practice this morning. Feeling like kicking my ass with body movement. Feels good. The physical. Earth and fire are my learning edges. I said that to the baristas, talking about astrology and they thought I said, “fire and earth are my party bitches,” hahaha, that’s right. Mercury and Neptune are my party bitches partying in the blog, wanting to shoot the shit from deep in the sea of arrow shooting precision but the watery kind that makes more sense to the heart than the mind. The need to let go of logic. The need to not try to be what they want me to be. Who I am? I am the pook! I break the structures and open up the new! I am free form and deep indigo blue. I am the melting away of the bitter hurt and the syrupy love of wisdom pouring into the third eye and blissing you out and then I am the party bitch that says bring it down to the animal ground and let the soil cover your body, surrender into the dream of the earth and you don’t have a worry. Recover tomorrow in the hangover from pleasure and surrender from drinking too much forgiveness and and eating too much of the treasure of this momentary existence. I dunno. I am just writing to write and let the words flow out and take flight. Mommy, sparrow. I miss you and feel you. Stay close another second. Fly away, you must.

Tales of Autoimmune Disease Living

It’s not easy having an autoimmune disease. Come summer solstice it will be a year I have been on some form of the AIP diet. Currently, I have brought back hard alcohol in moderation (no sugar or juice mixers though) and raw cacao/chocolate (again, no sugar) but otherwise I am fully AIP compliant. This means, no diary, grains, beans, nuts, seeds, nightshades (eggplant, all peppers but black, potato, tomato), and soy. Basically, I cannot eat out unless I cheat with having sweet potato fries fried in canola oil and a grass fed burger no bun. I was cheating a lot once my mom passed away, like once a week, with bread and canola oil and eggs sometimes and also a latte with almond or hemp milk. This threw me off and I was getting used to it, slowly losing balance. I realized lectins were bad for me so I stopped eating chicken and apples which had been staples in the first 10 months. I went into remission when I did this but did not stay in it because when friends visited, I went way off balance, eating and drinking to excess off the AIP diet. So I reigned my diet back in. Full AIP compliant, no cheat days at all. I told myself that I cannot eat like regular people and that I must learn to live like this if I want to stay in remission and possibly heal, which is much more important to me than eating the foods I want. Then I reintroduced chicken and apples, thinking the lectins were not so bad in them and I had a huge flare. Almost as if my body became intolerant of these foods all together, when they once were AIP staples. This happened early in the beginning when I introduced cashews and began to eat them daily. After a few months, they gave me massive stomach aches and I needed to stop. It’s as if the body is always responding in new ways and I have to follow suit.

So basically, I cannot eat the variety of fruits and veges the AIP diet calls for, due to lectin sensitivity. I could cook more veges maybe but I am too lazy to explore this avenue and too traumatized from new flares. So I stick to the same three meals, every day. I am forced to transcend my compulsive eating/food addiction too. I must get used to not using food to eat my feelings, ever. I cannot treat myself with food. I cannot eat out with friends. I can still treat myself with a drink or two at the bar with a friend and at the same time, I am ready to quit drinking alcohol at any time. If I cannot get back and stay in full remission with alcohol involved, I will quit. I also drink coffee and add coconut milk and not sure if this is adding problems or ok. It’s a messy process for me because I am attached to my coffee and coconut milk was a reintroduction that showed up as low level allergy when I got tested but seems to be ok to have. But what if it’s the cause of the recent flares more than the chicken and apples? I cannot tell yet. The reason I cannot tell is because it may be building up like cashews did but I don’t think so because it is not a lectin heavy food. Onward, this is how my life goes now. I may have to give up the coffee and coconut milk. I may have to give up the bourbon on the rocks. I may not.

Basically, a huge part of my life that was once very special and torturous to me, is now coming to an end. For good. Special, because I loved eating out with friends or alone. I was a foodie (on a budget) for sure. I loved caprese salads, indian food, mexican food, thai food, sushi, pizza, and I lived off off hummus and tomatoes. Now, I cannot eat any of it. My fun times and pleasure is gone for good. Torturous, because I have always battled with an addiction to food, so having all that freedom to eat whatever (before I knew I had an autoimmune disease that was causing my skin problem) led to weight gain and suppressing my feelings with food. The high and the low are now gone. My relationship with food and socializing is forced to change. I no longer meet friends for meals. I cook every single meal. I eat the same foods over and over like a pet with her pet food: sweet potatoes, grass fed beef, tuna, salmon, arugula, cauliflower, avocado, brussel sprouts, and AIP oils only. This is my life now. I have lost a ton of weight. I keep losing weight when I don’t cheat. I was starting to over eat my compliant foods but I got that under control now. My body is changing. I am changing.

When my mom got sick with cancer everything changed. I remember automatic writing three years before her diagnosis. The words told me in three years, if I did not do something drastic, I would get a tumor in my colon. But what happened was that my mom had the tumor. I was writing about the wrong person. But I have always felt this spot in my colon that aches. I don’t get it checked out and it is very mild. Been there a long time. My mom slowly stopped liking all food, due to the chemo. Her relationship with food was exactly the same as mine. Food addict and loving food, always over eating and using food to stuff feelings down. I started my AIP diet about nine months before she died. It haunts me how we both stopped relating to food as we were, both forced by illness and my mom’s illness that led to her death and how I predicted the tumor but thought it was about me. This is my life. I have a psychism that is not always totally accurate and I empath so hard core. I don’t always know who the psychic message is referring to, be it through automatic writing, feeling something in my body, channeling something in some fashion, however….

I sit here writing this morning with fresh flares that I think happened from chicken and apples but could be from a build up of coconut milk and booze. Not sure. I will first see if they vanish from removing the chicken and apples and if not, I will have to say goodbye to the liquid pleasures. I will do whatever it takes and somehow learn to find joy in new ways. I am not addicted to booze or coffee with coconut milk but they are pleasurable habits that I indulge in consciously to balance out that fact that I cannot eat hardly anything fun. I am such an imbiber. I am a hedonist. I love the earth pleasures. Life challenges. What my mom went through, that year and a half on chemo….I just cannot imagine. Her strength, her will power, her surrender, her love….

Grief is Love

I wanted to write on my therapist site this morning but my brain is unable to acclimate to that form of thinking and writing this morning. Feeling my mom, feeling sorrow, feeling forgiveness and redemption…a christ like feeling, pure love that absolves all conflict and separation…call it christ, krishna, love, doesn’t matter. The story is just the story but the force is the force and the force is with me. So much love in this certain quiet way. A way that wants to mother. A way that wants to absolve. A way that wants to be held and to let go into masculine strong arms that can hold all that I feel. Not a scaredy cat man but the man who is so connected to nature he feels at peace with the storms. I have storms coursing through me but they are not passionate. They are quiet storms that are cleansing the bottom feeding emotions. I am no longer relating to those bottom feeding emotions. Bring me a higher love. What are your bottom feeding emotions that seek out some conflict to express? Judgement? Jealousy? Envy? Hate? Rage? It all roots back to the same bottom. Lack. Violation. Emptiness. I feel everything but that. I feel my mommy in the sky. I feel the effulgence of life. I feel it even though it does not arrive on the outside in the strong hairy man arms or in the cash flow or recognition from the world. It shows up as deeply intimate friendships and sacred family ties. It shows up as forgiveness with every single conflict. It shows up as the sweet scent of jasmine and rose. It shows up as coffee and prose. Now I am just rhyming. I keep needing to speak in rhymes like a bard. I am filled with the desire to travel the world speaking in rhyme. I crave new life but keep pursuing the one I am living. Torn inside. My mommy watches and she must know something I do not. I realize I have transferred my grief into this bar by my apartment. I write the poem about my mom in there. It’s not about the booze. It’s about the atmosphere. It’s a loud ambient magical cauldron. I don’t want to be home alone in my robe every night. I don’t want to attend groups on healing because my life is way way way too much about healing. I want more variety in my life. Fun. Wild energy, which for me is creative expression, deep conversation, and the dark ambience of places at night that house the joy. I know bars also house alcoholism, stupidity, and youth but I am ok with this. I have always been comfortable around the dark side of human nature. I like being close to it, in a way. Maybe this is why I prefer city life. I don’t want to be tucked away in a clean rich suburb. This is just me. No judgement. I have transferred my grief into this bar. It’s weird. I am like those baby ducks from the science research studies. You know, the ones that lose their mother and attach to a stuffed duck? Except I have attached to a bar. This bar is my stuffed duck. How weird is that? I am a weirdo. I don’t mind. I don’t drink too much and I stay out of my robe. I miss mommy so much. I am regressed. A little girl. I am also the woman. I am the healer exhausted from giving too much and not getting enough back in return. I am the artist needing my next book to land in my lap and take me away from the over-emphasis on healing. Plus, this country is in need of voices. I am taking my privileged head out the sand now. Ready to contribute though I don’t know how. I will. I am. I got off the distracting book of faces and hopped on to the very political Twitter only to realize it’s a huge high school of people arguing and venting. Yet there is more seriousness to it. More depth. Maybe. It’s a start. Cute men roam the streets this morning and I want one of my very own. I don’t know who is right for me anymore. I am confused. I carry my mother’s wound. I carry the love to heal it fully. I am love manifest. I am the effulgence of forgiveness. I am free.