Reflecting…

My dreams are intense each night this week. It’s as if the unconscious is purging a particular complex rooted in lack. I feel that when we dream “bad dreams” we are purging them from the unconscious and it may be healthy for the psyche. Each morning I wake up exhausted from this. I am mooning and bleeding out the old as the psyche bleeds out the old. The old. It’s like a snake skin. The skin is old story ready to leave. The story where lack presents over and over. Lack and defeat in a certain area of life. We all can relate to this. What area of your life do you face defeat and lack in your feelings? It’s easy to always look to the external circumstance to point out the lack and yet the core is not in the circumstance, it is in the feeling. You feel lack and defeat. The circumstance is simply the circumstance. This is best understood when you see how two people can react to the same situation completely different. One person may respond with, “I am lacking and feel defeated,” while the other may respond with, “this keeps not happening but one day it will, I just know it.” Our temperaments play a huge role in how we metabolize the circumstances of our lives.

Dreams show us how we really feel about life, beneath the ego’s interpretation which is always rooted in wanting to be valued, accepted, and liked. My dreams show me that I am more sure of myself but doubting in others. In my ego life, I tend to blame myself but in my dreams, I am blaming others. Blame is what we do when we get hurt. It’s natural. But staying in blame means you collect karma by remaining attached to judgment. How much we all expect others to be at our level of standard. Truth be told, we are all at different levels of awareness, love, intelligence, capableness, strength. It’s nobody’s fault if they are not more advanced, more kind, having more integrity, knowing more, etc. We are responsible for our actions, of course, and yet we can only take responsibility at the level we are at in our psyches. We don’t expect children to know more than they know and hence tend to me more forgiving of them when they act mean or ignorant. Yet adults are children too. We are innocent beings doing the best we can. This is what I feel to be true.

It’s always been easy for me to love. I never held a torch for more than a minute, even to my perpetrators who abused me and I never wanted to hurt anyone who hurt me. It’s never been in my temperament to hold on to blame or anger. I can feel anger and blame and love and understanding all at once. When it comes to love, I feel very expanded. But I cannot expect others to be this way. I cannot judge somebody for holding a torch of anger and blame and not forgiving. I cannot expect others to be unconditionally loving and not want to harm those who harmed them. My ethics are rooted in tolerance, compassion, and understanding. Always. Even for perpetrators of the worst crimes. I have a Jesus heart. He was not the first to have this heart. Christians would disagree but to me, Jesus was a wise and loving sage, not the son of God or anything like that. He taught to not fight for eye for an eye. I feel the same way. He taught unconditional love. This is my everything.

I am not very good (or have not been very good) at the worldly aspects of life. Making money, buying a home, owning nice things, taking vacations, all the things my culture values, elude me. I want to be good at this aspect of life and it’s been a struggle. I am also not good at gaining popularity or recognition. I gain enough to get by and always battle and persevere with the material world abundance and accolades. I am working on it. I have been wounded here but these are just stories that shift and change as I heal and grow. I flow with internal everything and struggle with external everything. This makes me an effective healer and expressive artist always trying to establish material stability in the world with my gifts and talents. The divide between the internal and external was slashed in childhood. Trauma is a real bitch. Mix that with a sensitive and other-worldly temperament and you get an epic quest. I surrender to it even if it’s not fun or light hearted.

I am chronically single. Not because I cannot commit but because I have not had the chance to be with my true love and I am romantic at heart, looking for my special life mate. I have come close and said no to two men who fell short of being what I needed, as I wont sacrifice essential needs to be with anyone. I have held yens for men who did not feel it for me. But the mutual love/essential needs being met thing has yet to occur. So I live alone, year after year. I have no interest in the poly lifestyle and sharing my body with more than one person, although I respect it. I am as straight and cis-female as it gets although I think gender fluidity is a cool and needed progression of consciousness. I strongly defend the rights of the LGBTQIA community. I am quite traditional in the area of romantic love roles. I naturally like to do the traditional female things like make a nice home, decorate, clean, cook, nurture, and be the emotionally wise of the two. Though I never did want children…

I had a brief period in my twenties where I felt the soul of a female child wanting to come through me. I named her Briah. I was convinced she would actualize. During my Saturn return I had an unapologetic abortion and I wonder if this was Briah. I was not devastated by the abortion. I never felt it was anything more than a cluster of cells in my body, while the soul hovered around wondering if I would open the gates. I was relieved to not open them. I never have wanted the responsibility of motherhood. But every path has its gift and curse. As I get older, I feel more of a desire to be close with family and if I had children, I would experience more of this connection. My last boyfriend has four kids and although it was hard to juggle time with all of them, I really enjoyed being part of a big family, for the tiny bit we were together. I would make a good step mother or girlfriend of a man with kids because I don’t need to become mother number two or possess motherly affection from a child not my own. I could easily be a step-mom or guardian and give my love appropriately to children not mine. I could easily be friends or congenial with the mother of and ex too because I am not the jealous type.

At the same time, I could easily never have anything to do with kids for the rest of my life. I never felt a strong pull toward them. I suppose I am flexible as I am with so much of life. I have been feeling the strong pull to leave Seattle but I wont leave unless a man or job takes me somewhere else. I wont just go anymore. Been there, done that. For a man or a job, I would go almost anywhere in any instant because I love moving around and trying out new places. At the same time, I could root here in Seattle for life. I could decorate a home. I could keep my healing practice going till I die as it is the most natural thing in the world for me to be doing. I miss my sister a lot and part of me wants to move to DC to be near her. I feel sad my dad is alone in Vegas and wish I could make a happy life there. I long to live in Australia even though I have never been there because of a past life and soul obsession with that place. I have also felt called to live in Mexico. I am always open for change. I like to live with expansion on the tip of my tongue and yet…

I remain cautious because I don’t want to bolt like a gypsy for no reason anymore. I am open to it all. Why am I writing about all of this? Because I am grieving and my inner self has turned into confetti as a result. I feel like a shaken up snow globe. I crave newness now that I am in this world without mom. I crave true love beside me to be my home. I crave travel and expansion of my character. I crave a story I am not used to living in. My mother’s death has lighted the fire in my belly to end the book I have been the main character in and to start being the lead in a new book. My mom wants me to be happy. She is visiting again, I am sure of it now. I know she knows what is better for me than what I know for myself. Right now, I am unsure how to navigate the external world. I have never been good at that part. But I am rooted in what I am good at…which is knowing my soul purpose and being here on earth to emanate unconditional love, compassion, forgiveness, acceptance and wisdom, everywhere I go. I am also here to enjoy being embodied as a woman and this is the big ancestral healing tale of this life.

Death will come for me too and I trip out every day about how close it really is….

Three Months Since Her Passing

I haven’t blogged on here in long ass time (feeling a bit foul-mouthed and sassy today). Underneath, I feel ultra-tender and vulnerable. So many feelings…always…

I deactivated my facebook account in hopes to create more space for expressing myself in more quality ways such as writing in this blog. My big goal is to write a poem about my mother and read it at a poetry night held in a bar near my apartment. This is a goal for many reasons. I began writing poetry when I was eleven years old and obsessively so, filling up notebook after notebook. As a young adult, I first majored in creative writing. wrote and read poems at readings until my late twenties. Then it stopped. The faucet turned off as the internet turned on in the early 2000’s.

Right after my mom died, three months ago to this day, I felt the need to write poems again but nothing came out. Nothing came out until last week and it’s all connected to this bar by my apartment. The bar became special to me because the day I got off the plane from the death visit in Vegas, I wandered into it in a complete daze and state of shock. This may not even be true but in my memory I first ate some crappy food and then I wandered into this bar. Now this bar is linked in my head to my mother, forever. It is my bar. I don’t have a drinking problem but I do like to spend my time in the special places where the staff knows me and I feel at home. I suppose this is how I experience connection in my single urban life. I have my cafe, my bar, my grocery store, etc. I used to have a few restaurants until autoimmune disease made it so I cannot eat out anymore. But I can have a drink if it’s pure with no sugar.

This bar is special. No televisions! Pictures of animal totems all over. Wood walls that are art. Warm staff who are down to earth. Good music. A place that collects eccentrics. Not hipster, yuppie, bro, or any other faux persona type of place seeking glory. There’s a genuineness about it. A sincerity. And a strong magic. Just like my cafe. I made up a drink and named it after my mother, in the beginning. I called to her almost every night I sat there. Then, I stopped ordering The Vivian and calling to her every time I wandered in. I let go of trying to write the poem. I thought maybe it was a false vision. I also didn’t want to hold mom back from her travels on the other side by clinging to her.

Of course once I let go, there she was. Dangling above my head the other night. I could feel her. Or was it just my sentiment? I could not tell. These days my psychism is a bit blurry and I am unsure if I am feeling her or feeling me wanting to feel her. Usually I can discern the difference but with so much Pisces energy right now, it’s not so easy. She must have detected this because she gave me a clear sign.

I wanted to put on the Hamsa ring of hers we women bought to stay connected to her. I have one too and I have hers because they took it off her body when they zipped her up in a bag the haunting night of her passing. I still have not gotten over the sound of that zipper. I had the ring on my alter last week when I picked it up to put it on…but the ring flew out of my hands onto the carpet. When I bent down to pick it up, the ring had vanished.

This is not the first time this has happened to me in life. Supernatural events are fairly common in my world and vanishing jewelry has occurred two other distinct times. I looked under the bed and all over. Not much place for it to go. I looked for it over and over the following days. Nothing. I let it go. Told my sister about it on the phone yesterday and she asked if I had asked spirit for it to return. No, and I asked right there on the phone. I said if it shows up, we know it’s mom. The last time jewelry vanished and returned, my sister was on the phone with me too.

I looked under the bed after our talk and there it was in plain easy sight. Hi, Mom.

Two nights before the ring’s return the poem poured out of me. Or at least the first draft. Just like the olden days, I bought a crappy cheap notebook to draft my poems in, knowing there would be more than one. Knowing this would turn into a poetry and art book dedicated to my mother and to grieving my mother. It’s the only way for me to truly grieve. I must turn my feelings into art. My mother’s death must always be remembered.

I had stopped thinking about her every two seconds only for about a week or so before the flooding returned. This is normal, those who have lost their mom’s tell me. This time around, I am haunted by how sick she was. During her battle with cancer we were so focused on getting her better, on fighting, on being positive, and on being strong, that it blind-sighted me. Now, I look back and realize how much she suffered. I feel sorry for her. I remember this one time she was throwing up on repeat in the doctor’s office. She looked like a little girl who has surrendered to her fate. The memory breaks my heart.

There is nothing positive about cancer, chemo and the battle of this illness, I don’t care what pollyanna new ager wants to tell me otherwise. The real healing is to accept the tragedy with time and crying and allowing all the feeling up and out. Making peace is not easy because we have to accept the most painful experience that have no positive outcome.

I will say that out the tragedy of my mom’s life cut short and stolen by cancer, that her wish to die at home surrounded by family was granted and this is gift. I hold onto the gift of being by her side with my sisters like it’s a five caret ruby. Nothing compares. I hold the tragic pity beside the ruby gift. This is life. Filled with pain and beauty. This is why I must write poems. Poetry is the only way to express this.

I think what I really want is to write lyrics and sing but I don’t play any instruments and have no musical talent other than my moderately decent voice and writing talent. I wish a guitarist would enter my life and write the music and melody and I could plug in the lyrics and we could sing together. Or something like that. I wish I could be in a band. But these are only wishes because I am not talented enough to really seek that out and I have no friend musician who wants to make songs with me. So an art and poetry book, I shall make.

I cannot help it that I feel everything so intensely and deeply that the only way to not suffer and fall apart is to make art. I cannot help it if I grieve dramatically. My mother’s death is impacting me greater than anything I can name in my adult life. If you could not tell, I think I feel some shame. Shame for how I grieve. Shame for who I am. I know this shame is not mine. It comes from the bloodline, many ancestors back. It comes from being female and Jewish. It comes from being overweight during much of my life too. It comes from being so sensitive and emotional all the time. It comes from being humbled by life. My mother struggled too, in her life. But we found ways to make light of the days.

I miss the little moments. Shopping for clothes in discount stores before the cancer and online during the cancer. Watching dumb shows. Sitting outside and mom saying how much she loved her peaceful like and her home. I miss our banter about nothing. I miss her humor that always surprised me. I miss her sending me stupid emojis. I miss her sending me videos of the cat. I miss her talking about the food she ate before the cancer. How she liked an egg or a salad. I miss how she cut up fruit for us to share when I visited. I miss us going to the pool together when she was healthy. God, she lost so much to the cancer battle. No more enjoyment for food, no more pool, no more ability to walk, a hatred for food, no way to go shopping…so much loss of all she enjoyed…

I give love to myself and feel her love rain down over me from above. I don’t condemn or invest in the shame that passes through like weather…nothing more than weather.

Love rules this body, this soul, this house…

Love stays, love is true…