Over the past few weeks I have felt on the edge of something.  Big changes are tantalizingly close. It began with the experience of Circe’s Circle, but it has continued, one glance through the curtain at a time.  As I get closer to accepting all that I am, I also get closer to the experience of all that is possible.

I just wish I wasn’t so freaking afraid of myself!

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As I formulate my next post, I’ve been doing a lot of poking around the blogosphere, and I wanted to share some treasures with you.

• Jamie has opened a new Circe’s Circle.  If you are stuck or building a dream or want to be part of something that will move you forward in many ways, I can’t recommend this enough.  Jamie is an amazing coach, you will meet incredible people, and you will laugh, work and dream a lot!
• I’ve enjoyed Jolie’s site for awhile, but I have recently seen that she is giving painting tutorials on her blog.  Wonderful stuff!!
• Shameless family promotion:  My husband and his business partner have just launched their new site! If you are looking for something different to do online, pop over and be one of their first users!
• Leonie’s Goddess Circle.  As always, she has created a soul-full place for like minded souls to gather.
• Jo’s amazing new site.  She is a Reiki healer extraordinnaire!
• This post has come at just the right time for me.  I hope you like it too.
• Please join me in wishing Philippa well in her new life as a married lady.
• and last but certainly not least, I have gone back and read this post by Marianne about 10 times.  She never ceases to inspire me.

Have you got anything for me?  I love a good inspiring link!

Have a wonderful day.

xo

My latest lesson has come up half a dozen times in the last few weeks. Lessons are like that. First they tap and then they knock and then they yell and then they show up with a brass band, horses and hula-hooping acrobats. I’m trying to learn how to listen when they tap or knock because it is getting increasingly difficult to clean up horse shit.

Jamie and the amazing group of women from Circe’s Circle were the tap. It wasn’t easy being called on my lack of ability to say, “I am a writer,” but it was exactly what I needed. Then I opened Danielle LaPorte’s site this morning and I heard a knock. I figured I’d better answer this door before the yelling starts.

“Recognize if you’ve outgrown your “title”.
Deepen your claim, or lighten it right up.
Carve out your own personal lexicon. Snug, and radiant.
Educate people in who you are.
We want to know, for real. ” – Danielle LaPorte

Who am I?

Armed with journal, pen, and my pink suede Oxford Dictionary for clarification, I am off to make a list. My soul does deserve accuracy. (As does yours – you are welcome to join me. Who accurately are you?)

I’ll meet you soon.

xo

… and the first book I picked up and opened gave me the same answer I have known in my heart all along. (The same one I have been hearing from others for weeks now!)

Okay Universe. I’m in. Game on.

xo

I am in the middle of a life-long love affair with books.  As I type, I am surrounded by a riotous bookshelf, a shorter cubby-hole of precious volumes, and at least three piles of books on the floor of my office that have not yet found permanent homes.  I’m so obsessed that my husband had to intervene a few years ago when the postman started making cracks about us keeping Amazon afloat.

There is one book, however, that I value above all others, and it is one that I have created myself.  In 1995 I read the book Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach.  This book inspired me to start keeping an illustrated journal – really a massive, ongoing vision board – and I have kept at it for 15 years.  In some ways it is a lovely reminder of who I have been, but lately it has had a well-needed edit.  While gleefully ripping things out or covering things up that no longer represent who I am or where I want to be, I’ve been engaged in an unusual visualization.  As I tear out the photos of the women I no longer want to imitate and add photos full of colour and juice and vibrancy, I am claiming the woman that I have become, and it feels good.

Colour, bookshelves, teacups, rooms with floorboards instead of carpets, artist studios, rustic kitchens, flowers, quotes, quirks, peace, whimsy, treehouses, laughter, honesty and beauty – that is what my book is full of.  If I were to write a role profile to fill the position of the best me there is, it would look pretty much like the contents of this journal.  I’ve read in at least a dozen places that one of the best ways to know yourself is to collect what you love.  Well, I don’t know much for sure, but I can agree with that prescription.  All you need is an empty book, magazines, scissors and glue and your life will change.

Collect what you love and understanding will follow.  I promise.

I promised you definitions, and instead I am going to give you half an explanation.  It has been a little while since I wrote the last post.  This is partly because I have been working on getting my book ready to send out, but mostly it is because I had to sit with Sacred Feminine for a little while before I knew what to say.

Thinking back to the moment I found those words, I remember that I knew that sacred just felt right.  It felt like my cells sighed; like my constant search had been temporarily suspended.  Other times that I have felt like this have always involved a moment of pure connection: being with dear friends or family, standing at the edge of the sea or a beautiful lake, experiencing something exquisite, reading the right words, meeting a remarkable tree, or being somewhere beloved by others.  It stands to reason then that sacred for me is that point of connection where I and something or someone else truly meet.

Yesterday Mark and I spent some time in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.  Its collection spans time and the globe, and walking around any corner, you find yourself face-to-face with something wonderful.  In many of the galleries, my heart beat with appreciation and connection and it didn’t matter that I did not share a time or a religion or even a continent with the people who had created the treasures in front of me: we were connected by the beautiful object between us.

One of Style Statement‘s explanations of sacred is: “anything goes if it is deemed cherished.”  I like that, but I have realized that it doesn’t have to be cherished by me for it to be sacred.  I can hold a place for someone else’s cherished in my heart.  Sacred is that space.  It is the space where meaning lives, where understanding lies and where we meet in the middle.  It is the place where I feel the most connected and the most free.

Does that make sense?  If it does, I’d love to meet you there. (I’ll bring the tea.)

xo

Picture by hippy urban girl

This summer I am part of something called, “Circe’s Circle” run by life coach Jamie Ridler.  In the call last week I was talking about how hard it was for me to be proud of the work that I am doing.  One of the other women suggested to me that I needed to come up with a new word to use to describe myself, since when I used the phrase, ‘woo woo’ I had lots of trouble owning it.

As soon as I let myself process that, the word sacred popped into my head like a big Las Vegas casino sign, and I was drawn to get the book Style Statement off of my shelf.  It is a workbook aimed at helping you to define your authentic self.  I thought when I worked through the exercises a couple of years ago that I had come up with mine, but as it hadn’t stuck, I thought it was just another thing I had failed at.  As it turns out, I simply hadn’t got it right the first time.

Reading the definition of sacred, I felt like it was finally right.  Woo woo doesn’t convey the depth of connection or feeling that I have when I am working or feeling or noticing who I am.  Sacred feels richer and heavier and more… well… sacred somehow.  But that wasn’t the end of it.  As I read through the definitions of the other words, I got stuck on feminine.  Now I would usually have skipped right over that word, but that night something clicked deep in my core.

“Sacred Feminine,” I whispered, actually wondering why it felt so familiar before realizing that it is only the thing that I have written a whole book about.  The two words hum together in my head, equal parts who I am, what I believe and what I most need to embrace.

Most staggeringly of all, I explored all of this in my journal on my trip to Bath yesterday, and ended up rushing to finish in time to get off of the train.  When I sat down in Starbucks to wait for my girlfriends to arrive, I opened up my journal again and read the last thing I had written on the train: “… because now I know who I am.”  I don’t even remember remember writing it, but it gives me goosebumps to read.

So there it is.  I’ve given up woo woo for its deeper, richer cousin.  For better or for worse, I am officially reclaiming sacred, and you know what? It feels really, really good.

(This post got too long to go into what Sacred and Feminine mean to me – thank you for reading this far, I’ll tell you more another time!)

xo

I did it again. I was going to write another post about woo woo, and in waiting for just the right moment to write it, I didn’t write it at all.  There is another post about it coming, but it’s not ready yet, so I wanted to check in.

Things in my head are quite strange, so I apologize if this is all over the place.  I just finished watching the movie Amelia.  It was gentle and lovely, and even though I knew how it ended, I willed her to make it just the same.  Sometimes I wonder if people were put on this earth just to show the rest of us how it is done.  We remember her for how her story ended, but the important part is that she lived.

A friend did a Reiki healing on me earlier this year.  When she got to my head she remarked that my energy felt like she was being given a deep fresh breath.  I’ve been thinking a lot about that in the months since.  I feel like there is a force, an energy within me that I haven’t quite accessed yet.  Lately I have realized that it is not from lack of trying but perhaps it is because I have been trying too hard.   What is important is not how my story ends, but the way that I have lived.  This isn’t new, or rocket science, but it is surprisingly hard to hold on to.

Just a few minutes ago I read the quote above and thought about the concept of going nova.  Nova: “a star that ejects some of its material in the form of a cloud and becomes more luminous in the process.”

Yes.  All I can say is yes.

Spirituality and creativity and nature have always been wrapped up in a tight package for me.  My first church was in the trees at a summer camp, my first memories of a proper built church are full of sitting on my Grandpa’s knee drawing.  Praying and playing and being surrounded by love were one and the same.  As I grew up and found out that that was not other people’s experience, I started to hide mine.  I never really showed myself again.

So although I know that woo woo means different things to different people, I see it as showing overt non traditional beliefs.  When I get to some blogs and I see how free they are with sharing their beliefs, I am either exhilarated or nervous and that rattles me.  So how much do I share on mine? I don’t want to scare you away.  Do I tell you that I have been googling shamanic healing or that I own Faerie Cards or that I have had reiki or that when I am home I like going to church with my Mom?  Do I talk about whether or not I pray or what I believe or that my favorite thing in the world is to find the spirituality section of a big bookstore?

At times I find myself censoring what I write because I am not sure that I am ready to share, but often the bloggers that talk about this part of their lives are the ones to whom I am most drawn.  I know that everyone is different, but what are the lines that you won’t cross?  What makes you stay and read more and what makes you click away immediately?  Is there room for questions of spirituality in a blog or does it put you off?

How woo woo is too woo woo?

Go gently.

There is a tender soul there.

They are doing the best they can, but they can’t see that.

They can’t see the path that is spiraling around ahead of them, bringing them closer and closer to where they want to be.

They only see that they aren’t getting there.

They only see the times that they didn’t follow through with their plan or didn’t listen to their inner voice. They only remember eating the world and sleeping through and letting fear be the boss.  They only remember that they somehow let themselves down.

They only see that they are a big fat failure.

They don’t see the tender human being who is doing the best they can.  They don’t see that everyone else is struggling too.  They don’t see that other people sleep in and eat the world and don’t write 10,000 words a day or have perfectly clean houses or perfect marriages or easy lives.

They don’t see that they are beautiful and getting there.

Go gently.

There is a tender soul there who is learning their lessons slowly.

They don’t see that every step forward that they do take is worth 5 steps back.

They don’t see the other people who are looking at them and wondering how they got to be so wonderful.

They don’t see that they shine.

Go gently.

A boy was constantly scratching his head. His father looked at him one day and said, “Son, why are you always scratching your head?”
“Well,” the boy responded, “I guess because I am the only one who knows it itches.” – Osho

Here is a short list of things that have brought me delight this week:

1. This incredible article.  I got goosebumps reading it.
2. These notebooks.  I’ve just bought, “I am going to be a superhero and this is my plan.”
3. My new favorite blog to lurk on. (I have recently developed a complete love of pretty tea cups and all things tea related.  This will explain my love of this blog.)
4. This adventure. A full strawberry moon sounds too good to miss.  I’m convinced Jamie is magic.  I’ll be there!
5. This post.  This blogger is new to me, but this post made me giggle and admire her spirit – you’ll see why!