Ring the Bells That You Can Ring ~ The Trouble with Normal
In our time of disturbance and radical change, we are crossing a threshold, a portal, or an unseen bridge from one world to another. It could be said that the bridge is either collapsing beneath us, or being made as we walk together, in the long twilight hours when one civilization gives way to another.” ~Geneen Marie Haugen Every evening at seven pm I go out onto my balcony with a golden bell and shout, stomp, whistle, clap and holler my gratitude for the doctors, nurses, clinicians, and...
Read MoreWe Got Lucky ~ What every moment offers us
I had a bad day this week. It was a day of struggle and self judgment. The kind of day when you feel powerless, trapped inside the stories of the mind. The ruthless logic of my intellect had me pinned to the wall. The story of failure, of missing the boat, was loud and persistent. I saw myself repeating the same tragic mental and emotional habits of my parents, perpetuating the traumatic imprints of my whole ancestral line. Emerging from weeks of wild fire smoke, the infinite bright beauty of...
Read MoreA Safe Place To Fall ~ Taking Refuge in the Soft Spot
“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness” ~Peter Levine~ Recently, during a training that I am part of, I had the privilege of holding a beautiful and brilliant young woman I admire, while she wept her heart out. Two other women also held her, softly, tenderly and with reverence. I could feel the medicine of her deep grief informing me, inviting me, softening me. I was so honoured to offer her a safe place to fall, into this river of...
Read MoreLearning to Be Here
yes, yes, that’s what I wanted, I always wanted, I always wanted, to return to the body where I was born. ~Allen Ginsberg It can be quite a shock, when you begin to see: you thought all this time that you were here, but you were not. Not all of you. That’s what has happened for me, over the last few years. I discovered how much of myself I left behind. I had to learn to call those parts of myself back into my life, into my living breathing existence, into my body. It...
Read MoreTo Ground Myself in Nothing
Now that I’ve been in Victoria for nearly two years, I finally feel as if I have a life here. It’s not an idea, but an actual feeling in my body, that I am rooted here now, in a new life, that I am a vibrant part of the landscape, that I belong. It’s a glorious feeling and very interesting to me, since I have been engrossed for several years in a deep study of the nature of belonging. Human beings have a deep primordial need to belong. This is not always a happy story, since...
Read MoreEnding the Shadow Dance
Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost. –Vaclav Havel Many of our relationships contain shadow elements, ways of being with each other that are not conscious. These unconscious dynamics do not lead us towards health, authentic connection, and awakening. They protect us, they attempt to make us feel comfortable, safe, stable; and they often numb us, shut us down and fragment us in the process. One of the central drivers in our shadow worlds are the...
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