I've Kind of Found My Rhythm

For the longest time I felt an ending calling me. This past year I knew for sure it was time to stop publishing essays at Writing, Reading and Living. I began writing the blog in 2009 and feel deep roots. I plan to leave the site up for as long as free blogger exists, but the winds of change are sending me in new directions. I took a long break because I didn’t feel ready to move into a new writing space, but I also knew that if I didn’t begin publishing in a new space soon, it would make it harder to go back. You know the picture: vacation time, no writing deadlines, a great big field to wander in. At first it feels glorious and as the weeks stretch into months the lost days begin and the tormented writing soul begs to go home. 

 

In December 2025 I moved into a new writing space. Words Facing West (Substack)

 

I’m at home here at Earth and the Great Sea, and I plan to remain here. This online journal is my inner pond, my inner well, and the free-flowing place where writing makes a broth from my thoughts and experiences. 

But I don't share my polished essays here, it's not my goal for these pages. I view it the way my write-friend Patricia explains within her blogging pages. "This space isn't about performance or expectations. It is writing in its house clothes." 

 

It’s a cleaned up version of the raw, rough draft journal writings I scribble daily in my spiral note book. When I write in my journal often writing magic happens. Because almost all of the essays and memoirs I write and are accepted for publication in books and literary journals have grown into being from something I have written in my journal. 

 

Yet I don’t want to always be performing when I write. There is also a magic I’m able to tap into with journal writing that plants seeds. For me the journal writing wandering path leads to an inner quietude with a freedom to explore my real-life journey, and an open door for readers to ponder their own thoughts and mine.

 

Winter Count

I gave up so much four years ago when we moved away from everything familiar. Yet by taking this great leap of faith and moving into my newly evolving lifestyle based between the ocean and the redwoods, I’m gaining so much more. Still, moving was hard for me because I had this crazy idea that I would want to recreate a new life for myself similar to how it was before we moved. But it proved to be impossible. Partly because of my lifestyle of going back and forth from the ocean to the mountains, but most of all because this move has greatly changed me. It’s like I’m a teenager all over again, but in my 70s, figuring out who I am and what I want in this season of my life. 

 

In quiet corners of stillness I’m sensing doorways in my life that are open to me but I haven't yet stepped through. Early morning walks in the natural world and open spaces of solitude are leading me home to the girl, the woman, the writer, the mother and grandmother I’ve searched for, questioned, challenged, judged, and tried to shape, are coming into view. I see myself a few steps ahead, looking back, smiling. 

 

I still have plenty of vigor and I’m strong enough to do most of the things I want to do. My body is changing. My health isn't great, but it's holding. Compared to my elders I’m practically still just a kid. Yet I’m in my 70s and have begun the passage, my journey into old age is underway. One morning I will drink my last cup of coffee after a night of dreaming my last dream. It's a recurring thought I keep having. Surprising, but not scary.

 

Each morning I walk my usual two or three-mile loop, but my body no longer moves as easily as it did in the past. My face has grown fragile and my skin more wrinkled. It’s a time of assessing aims. Coming to an understanding, an acceptance. A time of peace, of power, a time of forgiveness and compassion, of giving up old patterns, surrendering to changes, embracing changes in preparation for the major changes that will come. Learning the lessons of the giveaway. 

I’m more aware my reserves are no longer limitless and where I put my time matters. Time is slipping fast, softy. Lightness of touch and living in the moment are intertwined. I hear a quiet tune in the spirit world, gently singing out the words, humility, gratitude, respect, caring, compassion, honesty and generosity, reminding me. 

I prop my feet up on the fireplace hearth, and gaze into the dancing flames. All of a sudden Auntie shows up, just as fierce in my mind as she was in life, and I remember the way she answered my questions by telling me to put it in my holy center and not to think about it too much, to just let the answer come in its own time. I was returned to the times when Auntie would surprise me by talking about what was good medicine and bad, and how to figure out what to do, and not do, if power was given. Auntie’s shoulders had bent with age as she grew into her 90s but she always stood straight as a young girl when she told me her stories. 

What I know for sure is that I’m moving along faster now while walking the seven ways, and the pathway is growing deeper. In my mind I hear Marie out in the spirit world talking to me. “Look inside yourself, trust your own thinking, and believe in your own power. What you are searching for to guide you is asleep within you, and if you weave the seven ways into your everyday life, your intuition will wake up.” My mind’s eye finds Marie in a soft glow. She stands up and walks over to where I’m sitting, and I can almost feel her hand on my shoulder.

That's how the light gets in

Forget your perfect offering 

There is a crack, a crack in everything 

That's how the light gets in 

—Leonard Cohen 

I’m in an organizing phase, moving things from one room to another. Rearranging my closet office nook area, switching my baskets around. Over the years I have woven a number of baskets, but most of them I've given to friends. Although I’ve spent much time with traditional Native basket weavers, I remain unskilled and use only one weaving style known as the lazy stitch. I also never follow a designed pattern because I get lost along the way, and there are always a few crooked stitches. My Indigenous basket weaver friends tell me this is good. They say a perfect basket is never the goal because it’s important to always leave at least one crooked stitch with a gap, so spirit can get it. As I dust the shelves, I think about how basketry is a concrete expression of Native peoples’ seamless connection to the natural world and how we believe baskets must be used and touched to keep them alive, and about spirit and light. 

 

Forget about perfecting my plans. Let a few of the things that have come unraveled fall away. Some of the goals I’ve worked towards, reached for, wanted, are not working out the way I'd hoped. What to do? When I finally find myself with enough time to be alone and quiet, the answer comes. Do nothing. Leave the cracks, let them be, allow space for spirit and light to get in. 

All is well in the valley

On Friday I got a second haircut from a kind, talented person recommended by a close friend. She worked her magic and gave me a much shorter cut.  She said if my hair continues to thin out due to alopecia we can adjust the cut and find a good path through the hair thinning process. 

I don't have the kind of alopecia that causes total baldness. The type I have usually only causes sections of hair loss. I scheduled another haircut appointment in 8 weeks, and my best guess is that I will be getting frequent haircuts for the rest of my hair life, which I hope is a very long time!

 

Thank you to everyone who is holding space for me. I'm feeling well, saddled up and ready to ride into the land of change. 

"Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts." —Salman Rushdie

What Comes Next and How to Like It?

Alopecia. There, now that I’ve said it, it feels better, just get it out of the way. But I did not plan to do a reveal right now. Not yet, it seemed too soon, since I still have plenty of hair.  I figured later, if, or when, it became obvious I’d stand up in sisterhood with all women with Alopecia, and share my experience openly. As an essayist and memoirist, that’s what I do. I write about crucial stretches within my life. 

What I have appear to have going on is Ophiasis Alopecia, affecting the sides above my ears, with a snake like pattern of hair loss across the back of my head. Currently I still have plenty of hair. But who knows what the future holds.

 

It’s been coming on slowly for a while now, and until recently wasn’t all that noticeable.

 

What Comes Next and How to Like It? 

What to do? Get a couple of inches trimmed off. We decide on shoulder length. This way I can gradually deal with my hair loss. But she got my shoulders mixed up with my chin, and without saying anything to me, no warning, gave me a chin length bob. Which would be perfectly fine, if I wanted to get a bob. And if I wasn’t dealing with Alopecia, which is the only reason I wanted to go shorter in the first place. 

The unexpected hair cut would also be fine if she had given me a great cut. But she did not. Mid-cutting, she admitted to having trouble with the cut. She could not get the left side to match the right. And right now I have crooked hair that I can’t pull back and get it off my face. I will need to find someone to fix it. Shape it. And the length is awkward, I want to go shorter. 

In some ways I’m glad this unfortunate haircut has forced me to be open about Alopecia and  hair loss. Most likely I would have needed to go short within the next year, and I would have shared openly then. Instead, I’ve been invited to take the journey now.

Meanwhile, peaceful redwoods are holding me. 

Moving and a Traveling Song

In March of 1978, I put the things I wanted to keep into storage, gave away other belongings, packed my backpack, left Los Angeles and spent two months traveling throughout Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England. We spent days visiting my husband’s family, and weeks wandering alone. 

 

When we returned to the US we moved to Santa Barbara, where we remained for forty-three years. Forty-three years of dogs and cats and children loved and raised. Newfound friendships forged. Years of jobs, some treasured, others tolerated, favored community-volunteer-work, favorite neighborhoods, bookstores and cafes. 

Now it is March 2021 and I am on the move again. Giving away many things, packing up only what is beautiful, useful and necessary. Still, I’m leaving with a lot more than we arrived with, letting me know that I’m not as minimal as I once thought. 

 

We are moving north. Our tiny temporary home is located in the mountain with family nearby and redwood trees line my morning walks. 

Meanwhile, I’m reacquainting myself with the young woman I once was, age twenty-four, who packed her backpack with three pair of jeans, three shirts, three sweaters, a Lanz flannel nightgown, warm socks, an extra pair of shoes, an umbrella, a small purse, and put on her coat and took a red-eye to London. With an open heart and my pockets filled with faith I began a long journey that I am now completing.

Year of Change

It has been one year since I last gathered with anyone and the tangled forest within me has grown wilder. Today I’m remembering the memoir writing workshop scholarship I was awarded last year in late January 2020, from a writing teacher who could see into my soul, understood what I most needed. She gifted me two full days of discovering, learning and gathering with other writers, new friends I fell in love with and I never saw them again because COVID arrived. 

A few days later in February 2020 I gathered with my friends in the Native community, and Joy Harjo was our guest of honor. A beautiful day at our nearby University with the Native Students, a place I frequent. Laughter, relaxed conversation, prayer, ceremony, outside on the grass, with the trees and birds on a sunny afternoon. The Coronavirus was not on our mind. It was out there, we were well aware, but it wasn’t here, not yet. Later that evening Joy played her music for us and she read to us. The student lounge was filled with Native people, all of them my friends, Native students and the Elders, and I was comforted with our common Indigenous bond, our shared essence, with the jokes that didn’t need explaining. It was a good day to be alive. 

 

The memoir writing workshop and the gathering with Joy and my friends was the last time I gathered with people. And now it is February 2021 and we are still at home, always at home because the Coronavirus continues to spread rapidly where we live in California. It means that I have been hunkering down at home for some time now. 

 

I’m OK, making peace with what is and I’m holding space for those who are feeling too isolated, sad, with too much time alone. Holding space for the pain they are feeling. Holding space for those who are now unhoused, for those who are hungry, ill or suffering and have lost their heart. 

Yet for me, solitude has been my friend. I needed time to write, to read. Time to be alone and silent and process the whole of my life. I listen to the wind at dawn. The wind comes up from the west, smelling cool, like wet clay washed smooth by rainwater. Wind tangles against the foothills and I’m like the wind blowing wild through a tangled forest. 

 

“She is a wild, tangled forest with temples and treasures concealed within.” ―John Mark Green

Happiness

Happiness is a decision. I’ve taken to writing a joy list in my journal to remind me to feel happy in simple ways. Sunrise. Black coffee in my favorite mug. Making a pot of soup with late season vegetables. Searching the garden and finding a few red serrano peppers clinging to spent vines. Sunset and moonlight with owl sounds pressing against the night. 

Last night a deep throated owl called out, followed by long minutes of silence. He called again and again. Just when I was drifting off to sleep, I heard a higher pitched owl. She responds twice, calling back to him. My mixedblood Creek author friend wrote a book titled OWLS DON’T HAVE TO MEAN DEATH. The owl symbolizes many things to different peoples. The stories auntie told us about owl were rooted in our Cherokee ways. Owl medicine is thought to be so strong it should not be mixed with other energies or worked with lightly or irresponsibly. 

I let my thoughts float, slip and drift. Happiness cannot be defined by mood now, not in these times with Coronavirus Disease still at a high-level risk in my California community. Happiness must be cultivated, tended to daily, like the garden.

It’s Fall now. We had some deep heat, in a drought, and the mornings have turned cold. The season changed overnight. Will my life change as well, again? My garden spider is still around. She grows bigger each day. I’ve come to know that she is an Orb-weaver and I am tuned to her rhythm. Midday her web is in disarray with gaping holes and trapped insects. She returns after the sun has set. Last night the moon was bright and I watched her have dinner. Before I go to bed, I go outside to wish her well. I stay a respectful distance away. She knows I am there. 

Each morning before sunrise I find her web in perfect order, all damage repaired. If I arrive when it is still dark enough, I find her still there. She leaves before daylight arrives.

 

Today, while she was away, I discovered the silver stands in the juniper bush, below her web, that look a lot like my silver-gray hair—really is my hair. Often, I bush my hair outside, by the back door. I watch the loose hairs fall to the earth or float away in the wind. On the first day I met the spider I remember seeing what I thought was a tangle of her web woven in the juniper, by the back door, near the spot she chose to weave her web, beside my hair.

 

Watching this garden spider while searching to find my happiness, I find my happiness in watching. 

Orb-weaver

A black garden spider has spun her web near my back doorstep, just to the left of me as I write. She is a showy spider. Her body is a little more than one inch, with a third pair of legs about half as long as the other legs. We spend most evenings together. She keeps me company while I am living in this never-never land of coronavirus, that twilight place we are all suspended in while the virus dominates, requiring humans to spend more time alone. 

Much has been written about the loneliness of the writer’s lot. The truth as I know it, in my experience, is that writing is not a lonely business. I write with my characters telling me stories and with the natural world all around me. There are days when the sky does high drama, a stiff wind, dark, scuddling clouds, pellets of rain. Today the sunset is a slender strip of magenta heat. Soon it will be time to check in with my spider-friend. Midday I find her web helter-skelter with holes and large gaps connected by fine threads, dangling. Silver strands, like my hair in the sunlight. She returns after dusk, after spending her day who-knows-where. Hours later, after the sky has turned dark, I find her web repaired and she sits in the center, awaiting. By dawn she will be gone. I wait for nightfall, for her return. One night she will go away and be gone forever, meanwhile I am tuned to her rhythm. 

a Long Way from Home

An off shore breeze is blowing, bringing the scent of salty sea air. The waves drown out the hectic rhythms of the city with its time table and schedules. 

I can’t see the ocean from here, but I can smell it, two miles away as the crow fly, and my mind begins to turn over in careless rolls as I pick my way along the rocky path in my backyard, surveying the leafy garden greens and search the tomato and zucchini plants.

It’s too soon for tomatoes but the zucchini has begun to share with us. Bending low to the earth I say good morning to the yellow squash blossoms. 

From a branch high above a Red Shoulder Hawk watches me. The mountain sage is fragrant with healing. I pick a few leaves and say thank you by plucking a hair from my head and let it fall to the ground near her roots. 

“In Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on top—the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of creation—and the plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as the younger brothers of creation.” I was taught and grew up keenly aware that the plant world and the animal kingdom are our relatives. I’ve borrowed the words to explain our relationship from “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer. 

I harvest arugula, cilantro and a cucumber. The avocado tree is giving now and avocados are ripening on my kitchen counter. Today two are ready. While the land cannot sustain us completely, she feeds us well. Next, I forage my freezer and retrieve a loaf of sourdough bread. It’s our last loaf but if we go easy it will provide us with lunch sandwiches for the next five or six days. 

In order to eat in these Covid-19 days I must subdue the urban wilderness into which I have been cast. Grocery shopping is no longer easy or taken for granted. After lunch I dig into my secret stash. On the last day of my life I want to have had a piece of dark chocolate so I live accordingly. Dying tomorrow, so what do I want to do today? 

I have lifted both the chocolate and dying sentences from something Anne Lamott wrote years ago. Her words feel appropriate for the shape of the world into which we have fallen. Feeling healthy one day and perhaps Coronavirus the next. But I’m careful to reduce my risk by leaving the house only for an early morning walk at sunrise when few people are about. And my bimonthly trips to the grocery store. Other than those two ritual outings I’m working, writing, reading and living at home, the same as usual. 

What is not ordinary is that my husband is now always at home, his work life placed on hold due to Coronavirus in the air. But he has plenty of other things to keep him occupied, including gardening.

Bills to pay, less money coming in, worry and fear abound. I am deep in my well, and the water is pure. I’m at the edge of a shift. While extra stress surrounds me and I still fall prey to doomsday thoughts and over-snacking when we are lucky enough to have potato chips or popcorn, and drinking too much wine when we are fortunate enough to have wine, there are also days when I’m more successful in terms of how kind to myself I have become. What a wonderful tender friend I am to myself. I'm reading more, walking daily, writing often, sleeping more and dreaming, and growing comfortable without. Without all of the things we all had before this odd new safe distance lifestyle began. I've come to understand that I was a starving artist and the busy world I inhabited before this virus hit could not feed me. 

My soul whispers, inviting me to listen to the wind playing through the trees, to sing, play music and dance in the light of the moon. Still, I'm a long way from home. The moon reaches out and I take her hand. 

And in my bones I remember my great-great grandmother. She survived small pox, measles, scarlet fever, the winter her feet froze and the flu of 1918. Grandma gave birth to eleven babies. The first died at four months, the second at age eight, it went on like that for years, grandma giving birth and grandpa making baby boards and lowering those dead babies into the ground. But five of her children survived and lived long lives. 

I think about my own son, diagnosed with a brain tumor at age seven, then growing well and strong again following surgery, radiation and chemo, and then dying at age fifteen when the cancer recurred. I feel the boundary of time fall away, as if my great-great grandma and I have lived side by side.

Her family slept on deer hides, Grandma shelled corn, ground it into meal and picked dandelions for their greens. In times of plenty they pulled their dinner from lakes and streams. 

My dad remembers visiting her on Saturdays. She was alone now and lived in a log cabin in Oklahoma. She told stories from a rocking chair. Two flat pewter braids hung past her waist and deep valleys formed between her cheekbones and chin. Grandma passed her stories on to my dad, and to me she handed down her strength.

She is a wild, tangled forest with temples and treasures concealed within

It’s a beautiful spring morning. The scent of mountain sage and lavender are fragrant with their healing. Orange California poppies are reaching toward the sun. We are healthy and well and remain at home during the COVID-19 Coronavirus Disease pandemic. Now I have time to reflect and let all of the things I haven't had time to ponder settle within me. 

Worry takes up residence in my mind. I push it away and instead think about the memoir writing workshop scholarship I was awarded in late January 2020 from a writing teacher who could see into my soul, understood what I needed most right now. She gifted me two full days of discovering, learning and gathering with other writers, new friends I fell in love with. The writing retreat lifted me from the despair I was feeling following the two new cancers my husband is facing. Left me knowing I will rise. 

I was also able to complete a final draft of a memoir I have been working on for the past few years. Days later on February 1st my husband and I were on the road, a few miles from home, when a driver on the wrong side of a two-lane highway raced toward us. Without a moment to consider we swerved violently and fortunately there was a shoulder to catch us. Our tires did not screech and the car didn’t roll and we lurched out of the way, as the wrong-way driver sped by, inches away from our car. I could feel the velocity, the rush of wind, or an angel, move us out of danger. We sat on the side of the road, stunned. Aware we were now forever changed, on a different trajectory. 

An hour later I received a phone call telling me Joy Harjo would be in town, giving a presentation on February 5, 2020 and would I like to have dinner with her? 

Although it was supposed to be “just a dinner” with a small group of writers gathered, were the others aware? Could they feel it too? The healing energy that began to surround me, and this healing took hold, began to carry me. 

The next day I gathered with my friends in the Native community, along with Joy. But this time at the University, with the Native Students, a place I frequent. Laughter, relaxed conversation, prayer, ceremony, outside on the grass, with the trees and birds on a sunny afternoon. The Coronavirus was not on our mind. It was out there, we were well aware, but it wasn’t here, not yet. Later that evening Joy played her music for us. Read to us. The student lounge was filled with Native people, Native students and the Elders, and I was comforted with our common Indigenous bond, our shared essence, with the jokes that didn’t need explaining. It was a good day to be alive.

The memoir writing workshop in January 2020 and the dinner and other gatherings with Joy and my friends in early February was the last time I gathered with people.

And then in late March our cat had a stroke and died. Charlene. The cat that rescued me. We met in 2012 when I worked at ASAP Animal Shelter Assistance Program. She came into care semi feral and sweet. Happy to retire from outdoor living at the young age of four and was thankful to move indoors. She taught me cat behavior, how to sleep with tigers and I followed her rules. She was a patient teacher. She raised me well. Her only agenda was me, always by my side. My best friend. A feral girl grown tame. Encouraged me to claim my wild and to lead with sweetness. 

Now it is April and we are still home, following the required "Safe Distancing" due to the Coronavirus rapidly spreading. It means that I have been hunkering down at home for some time now. But I don’t mind. For me it is much like a vision quest. I’m holding space for family and friends who are feeling too isolated, with too much time alone. Holding space for the pain they feel. 

Yet for me, solitude is my friend. I need time to process all that has happened. I study the night skies. The stars give off a gentle light, softer than moonlight and I listen to the wind at dawn. The wind comes up from the west, smelling cool, like wet clay washed smooth by rainwater. Wind tangles against the foothills and this is when I discovered that I will never evolve into the soft, gentle, calm earth mother temperament I’m always reaching for. Instead, I’m like the wind blowing wild through a tangled forest. 

She is a wild, tangled forest with temples and treasures concealed within. 
―John Mark Green 

What is Important to Me?

Friends. Family. The Natural World. Spirituality. Books. Reading. Writing. Music. Race. Culture. Ethnicity. Love. Discoveries. Understanding new things. Hearing Stories. Being in the moment. Letting go of expectations, the outcome. Dreaming. Tender Memories. Water. Rivers. The Sky. Trust. Faith. Vulnerability. Prayer. Ceremony. Seeing the Spark and the Pain in each person I meet. Listening. Deep Listening. All things ethnic and working class. The margins. Borderlands. Raw, unedited versions of music and writing. The ordinary. The Monk's Journey. The Rez. Feeling connected to my Sharecropper, Indigenous, Indian, Mixedblood, German, Jewish, under educated, hard, hard, hard life ancestors. Meeting people of great privilege and hearing their stories. Learning. Becoming real. 

What Brings Me Joy? 
Sunrise. Twilight. Sunset. Owl sounds pressing against the night. The moon. Rivers. Mountains. Trees. Laughter. Sleep. Black coffee. Dark chocolate. Fiddle music. Banjo music. Live music, all music. Reading. Writing. Walking. Rough draft journal writing. Organizing. Day dreaming. Puttering. Lizards. Garden spiders. Dogs and cats, all animals, and wild life. Friends and family. Home comfort. Making soup. Clean sheets. My online group of women friends, all 65 of us, from all over the world, gathered together in one conversation. Our annual community powwow with 40 years of memories in my soul. Clouds. The night sky. Memories of my son, memories of Luke. Good wine. A great pair of jeans and sandals on my bare feet. Solitude. Ceremony. The serious, silly and just having fun. Astrology. Learning about Tarot Cards, a new found joy. This moment. This day. Yesterday, and thoughts of maybe tomorrow. 

My Big Secret
I'm shedding things from my life. Old habits, old thought patterns, old wished for positive behaviors that I no longer want to reach for. Goodbye Balance, you no longer serve me. Now I'm blending. Blending this with that in my life, because if we take care of the moments the years will balance themselves. And I'm tossing out the fear of it being discovered that I'm afraid. All that I'm afraid of, is getting smaller, shrinking as I walk into the unknown. I'm tossing out old emotional patterns I wanted to grow past. I pointed all guilt out the door. Go! Leave! You are no longer welcome here. The wide open field of me, is marked with boundaries. 

Faith, Hope and Dream Big

The morning air is fog softened, blurring the boundaries between the earth and the sky. My thoughts carry me back to the mountain community where I spent many of my growing up years. Snow is falling now, the scent of frozen winters past linger in my mind, when I dreamed big and lived on hope. 

Each year I give myself a word theme and for me the new year begins in the fall. Last year my theme was sabbatical, with a focus on education, rest and renewal. It was also a year of much writing and publishing and I could feel myself drifting toward the “Rest and Renewal” phase, with "Dreaming" on the horizon. 

Last year I was specifically focused. But the year I journeyed with “Year of Change” I didn’t want to establish any goals for myself other than to lean into the moment and be open to what comes. 

It’s a good thing I was saddled up and ready to ride because for the past three years major life changes continue to erupt and I can feel the pattern holding strong. Year of Change has become my life theme. But I was no longer in sync with the energy. I’ve been holding back, resisting. Disappointed. Grumpy almost and I’ve got to get back to the garden.

It has occurred to me that in order to lean forward into the changes taking place, first, I need to grieve the loss of my older hopes and dreams. Let go, release them, gently. Then I will be able to hope and dream anew. To begin reaching for things that can come true, bring joy, laughter and peace, while we deal with health challenges, while the political world continues to rumble, while those in charge of decision-making continue to violate my morals, while borderland children are separated from parents, while yet another wild fire threatens our neighborhood, while circumstances are sending me on a detour, instead of the path I wanted to take, while much grace, kindness and beauty also surround me. 

Except I’ve forgotten how to dream. And while I’ve been traveling with hope for as long as I can remember, lately I’ve preferred faith. Hope is a verb. Action. I love verbs, but it takes a lot of energy to remain hopeful. If asked to describe myself I would tell you I have rock solid faith, yet I need to restock my supply of faith, because it takes a lot of faith to hope and dream big. 

Meanwhile, I’m restoring faith while reading emails from my friend Ali who was born for and was raised on the Kusquqvak in southwest Alaska. A member of the Orutsararmuit Native Council. Rooted, solid in her knowing. Thriving where she stands. 

“So excited to put up salmon with four generations of women." Ali writes. "Smoking salmon in the heat means tending early morning (cooler) fires and guarding against peaty blue flies laying eggs on salmon flesh and hoping for a good wind and drinking lots of water. Our kin lost her smokehouse full of salmon to a total loss fire. Sad. And yet people joined together to help her rebuild and start again. Early berries too because of the heat. Lots of changes.” 

As winter deepens Ali writes, “I extend my greetings to your family as my daughter joins her husband in butchering the young buck deer who gave himself to her yesterday morning. We are still dealing with the boiler not working. After my son-in-law brought the buck home last evening I set my oven to clean thrice and lit the steam-room twice to keep heat—against chilled inside air and freezing pipes—until the boiler man gets here this morning."

.   .   .

Sometimes it’s easy to slip into my pain groove, and take inventory of all the ways I hoped my life would be, and isn’t. Ali's words remind me not to wait for anything, to reach now and bloom where I am. And my friend Eyoungsoo said something that has also placed me on a far better road. He said, "Our beliefs make up our reality." 

Every day since I've been reshuffling my beliefs and searching for new ways of thinking and being. My new reality is beginning to feel wider than the sky, filled with possibility.

There is much more for me to explore while I journey with Faith, Hope and Dream Big. 

This much is true

If you realize that all things change,

there is nothing you will try to hold on to.

If you aren't afraid of dying,

there is nothing you can't achieve.

Trying to control the future

is like trying to take the master carpenter's place.

When you handle the master carpenter's tools,

chances are that you'll cut yourself.

(Tao Te Ching, #74 trans. by Stephen Mitchell)

Traveling the Wheel

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself. —Rumi 

Each year I give myself a word theme and I let it lead me on a journey, and for me the new year begins in the fall. Some years I’ve been specifically focused. But this time I didn’t want to establish any goals for myself for other than to let myself dream more and lean into the moment and be open to what comes. Of course I would continue to meet my work, home and family responsibilities. Though I wanted to let go of any particular end goal and stay open, willing to flow with the unexpected that arrives, and to step out of my comfort zone and be open to possibilities. 

Before I had a chance to select my word, my life began to erupt with more multiple changes and I could feel the pattern that began last year continue, holding strong. Usually I resist any changes I haven’t ordered. But this time I had no interest in answering from a place of fear or control. I was in sync with the energy and leaned into the changes taking place. 

Some of the most important things I had planned for were not unfolding as I had expected or wanted.  Our income decreased. Hard earned money saved, was spent on necessary life expenses. I’ve been living frugally for the past few years, saving instead of spending, and it made me grumpy to meet expenses with money slated for future hopes and dreams. My life’s circumstances left me feeling as if I were stuck in place and what I wanted most was to move forward. It was another year of drought, tenacious ants. Two fires, devastating mudslides. Health issues surfaced, his and mine. The dog got sick, vet bills. My mother and my father’s health took bad turns. Yet another close friend died and crossed over to the other side. 

Still, all year the good things out numbered the bad. My grandson learned to ride a bike and my granddaughter learned to walk and talk and now she is running. The dog’s health improved. Our health is stable. I had my lucky money saved so we could pay the bills. I broke old bad habits and developed new behaviors that better serve me. I made significant writing and publishing gains. Tending The Fire: Native Voices and Portraits was published by University of New Mexico Press and I’m feeling mighty lucky to be one of the authors featured. The honor extended to me being invited to do a reading from the book at The Autry Museum in Los Angeles.  I made good progress on other writing projects, including a second memoir.

What I gained in the 1990s when my son lived with and died from a brain tumor, is the confidence to know I will be able to deal when terrible things happen and that strength comes from sources unimaginable and that it is much easier for me to give than to receive. Things are not terrible now, only days filled with hard spots and soft spots. 

Craving a sabbatical, yet finding it necessary to stay rooted and meet ongoing obligations I began finding ways to weave study-time and time-out into my days and nights and to see my community with new eyes. I began Israeli folk dancing and made new friendships. I completed a Unitarian Universalist sermon-writing workshop and spent five months within a liberal progressive worship ministry team and made more new friends. I continued my daily long early morning walks with my dog, and wrote daily long hand letters to myself in my journal. I read all of the unread books on my shelves and stayed true to my goal of growing increasingly more minimal by purchasing less. 

I believe volunteerism is the backbone of community and the rent we pay for the space we take up on this good earth. As a lifelong volunteer within my communities I came to understand that I’m no longer a distance runner. Now my strength is sprinting. Giving my all to complete a section of the work needing to be done and then passing the baton and giving myself a pause, a hiatus before accepting the next volunteer assignment. 

There was a time when I didn’t know how to feed my spirit and ended up muffling it with demands and distractions, instead of stilling the center. I tossed out my to-do list. Canceled unnecessary appointments and gave myself a few quiet hours each week to be silent and listen within. 

At the end of each workday, instead of trying to get more and more done, I sat outside in the twilight watching the sky and the light change from day to night. The wind came up and blew my hair in my eyes. With a blanket pulled over my bare arms I let the chill air embrace me. In the light of the stars and the moon penetrating the night, I began addressing my fears and one after the other I tackled them. 

Each phase of the moon, the crescent of first quarter, to the almost full three-quarter moon called me and I saw how each phase lights up the earth in a different way, her effect on the waters, and my emotions, and the way she lights up the shadow side of life. In my Native culture the moons do not follow today’s 12-month calendar. Instead there are 13 moons and they follow the seasons. September brought a full moon two days after the equinox, relating to change, the turn from autumn to winter. Traveling the medicine wheel I found myself under the influence of the thirteenth moon and the way she heralds change, brings times of transition and new opportunity.

In the daylight dragonflies came and hovered over the pond. 

I was invited to deliver the sermon/inspirational talk I wrote (and I accepted) using storytelling to share the pathways I have cultivated to bring pockets of calm, tranquility and spiritual renewal in a chaotic world. Video. 

It was a year filled with hugs, tears, and laughter. I came to understand that I’m completing the circle. And yet I’m beginning, because endings are also beginnings.

Resistance

The weather is doing high drama. It’s too hot for this climate of drought. Ants again. Tiny and strong, with a powerful bite, and a tenacity matching mine. Ants camp on my counter tops. I clean with vinegar and baking soda, sprinkle cayenne pepper. Ants crawl on me in my bed of clean, clean sheets. I wake in the morning and rub tea tree oil on my skin. Ants, I want to avoid you. But Grandma tells me you have lessons for humans. Strength. Endurance. Efficiency. Persistence. Productivity. Courage. Forethought. Community. If I stop resisting, stop complaining and learn what you have to teach, will you leave? 

In the west the sunset is a slender strip of orange heat peeking through the Oak trees. Ripe and seductive, like summer love when I was fifteen. I sit outside in my deck chair, hoping for a breeze, stretching out my bare legs, brushing off ants making their way toward my knee. The air is sultry and twilight arrives like an affair that can’t quite get started. 

This year of change is asking a lot from me. More unwanted, uninvited life changes thrust upon me. I’m fond of change and variety. But I had this crazy idea that I could order up the changes I wanted to occur. To hand pick them and decide when, where and how. I’m annoyed; frustrated yet I know the better route is to lean in. Lean into the fact that I currently do not have the funds, energy or resources I’d like to have and let it be. Trust that if I lean in, instead of fighting against, all will work out for the best possible good, for the highest good. 

This California drought. Fire weather. Water conservation. The dry creek bed behind my house. The bucket in my shower catching gray water to flush the toilet. Conserving so that I can keep the birdbath filled with fresh clean water. 

My thoughts are cranky and resistant. My inner pond has dried up. It must be kept stocked and flowing freely. I’m happiest near live water. Tomorrow I will get up early and drive to the ocean. Tomorrow afternoon is my Israeli dance class. Dancing makes me feel happy. Tomorrow. Already I can feel my resistance give way to perseverance and determination.


Postscript:
Late last night, when it was hard to get back to sleep, I got thinking. It would seem that after raising a child living with, and later dying from a brain tumor, I would get it by now that we can't order up the life changes thrust upon us. But the good news my friends is that apparently hope really does spring eternal, because have regained my innocence! 

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. — Viktor E. Frankl

Photo credit - Randy, Santa Fe Daily Photo

Winter Count

The light is filtered through the trees and I’m feeling my internal rhythm in sync with winter. I felt the energy begin to shift and it continues to deepen. It’s been a paradoxical time of inner growth. A quiet dormancy followed by spurts of insight. 

Three friends have walked on, finished their life on earth. Perhaps this is why I’m more contemplative than usual. Or maybe it’s because I’m recognizing that I’m in the winter of my life. 

I walk 3 miles daily and often more, yet my body does not move as easily as it did in the past or will in the future. The year has been a time of quiet and focus and my dreams filled with messages. I’m seeing my face grow fragile, skin wrinkled, resembling soft clay soil, like the face of the earth mother. It’s been a time of assessing, aims. Coming to an understanding of my life, an acceptance of what I have and have not achieved. It’s been a year of peace, a time of power, a time of forgiveness and compassion. A year of giving up old patterns, surrendering to changes, embracing changes in preparation for the major changes that will come. Learning the lessons of the giveaway. 

I am more focused and more aware that the reserves are no longer limitless. An awareness that where I chose to put my time matters. Choices. Decisions. What books, projects and articles do I want to put forth? And to be living after I am not living? What do I want to teach? Where do I want to live? I’m thinking about what my friend Patricia said when she was in a similar transition, “That attempting to make everything solid felt like she was braiding smoke.” 

I'm thankful for my circle of friends who lift me higher than eagles fly as I move within another transitional period, filled with hard and soft spots, but also gifts.  An awareness, an understanding of the importance of blending the spiritual with the every-day, with the practical. To make choices that bring stability and flexibility. Most of all I’m aware that each breath is not a given.