Turning 50?!

I'm turning 50 this year - in about 5 weeks actually. I delight in getting older and wiser. I don't cover the grey in my hair and I started saying what I actually think a long time ago. And, this 50th is presenting a bit of stress for me. Why?

I have been sitting with that question for a couple weeks. Why does turning 50 seem to be a difficult birthday?

At this moment (I'll continue to carry the question) I believe it's simply that I am also in the middle of a transition in my life and career. I have dedicated a very large part of my life to my career. I do not regret this. Developing my gifts and learning how to speak about them took concentrated effort.

Now, I am ready for a more developed and satisfying personal life; a partner, vacations, more time with friends, maybe a house. I have to remind myself that it does take time to develop those relationships. I feel like a kid at the beach though. It's hot, I anticipate how wonderful the water will feel. Still, we have to carry the picnic basket and all the towels and water, etc. and claim our little island of space. Then it's time to put on the sunscreen and then, what feels like hours later I can finally dip my toe in or just dive madly. Ahhhh!

Yesterday - a day after the full moon and lunar eclipse - I woke up feeling like I was failing. It was awful actually - I rarely feel like this. All my inadequacies seemed highlighted and possibly fatal. I just kept breathing and shared my feelings with a few close and trusted friends.

This morning all is right with the world again - or at least, I feel successful. Lunar eclipse? Maybe? Sometimes we have to feel our feelings and let our doubts surface - and just breathe! Oh, and trust that our strengths and joy will surface VERY SOON!

So to everyone turning 50 or some other significant age - cheers. It's just a number. What else is going on?

Intuition & Conscious Spiritual Practice

Last week I was lost and looking for the way out. It always helps me to get out of town. It's the perspective change that you get just by changing environments.

I'm birthing myself again. Yes, again. I believe it vital to do this every once in a while. It keeps you honest and also sets you free of patterns (yours or other's) that might have stuck to you but certainly don't serve you.

Me, I do a lot of dancing between what I know my own truth to be - particularly as a psychic healer and someone who works daily with the unseen realm - and what I think people are comfortable hearing and knowing.

Judith Orloff's words bring me both comfort and courage to move ahead.

WOW excerpt - Make Your Intuition a Conscious Spiritual Practice (Judith Orloff's chapter)

The intuitive realm doesn't obey the same laws as the physical universe. It isn't sequential - it's non-time, non-space. In the silent space there is no past, present or future. Sometimes this disorients people. Mystics have described this as oneness, and when you begin to feel this oneness - this flow that's between everybody, every living thing, and every nonliving thing - there's a relationship going on. You can feel it as a pulse and it's very real. You can have many levels of awareness at once.

Freedom is the great gift that can come from speaking your voice. For me, speaking out has been a healing path. As a child I had many premonitions and my parents didn't encourage me to develop my intuition at all. When I was eleven, they told me to never mention them again in our home. So part of my ealy process was suppressing my gift, being shamed into thinking there was something wrong with me. It does tremendous violence to children if their voices and creativity are stifled, if their parent's don't see who they are and don't honor their intuitions.

Finding my voice and coming out in the world with it was healing for me. I had so many questions: why use it? How do I use it? Is it something I should use with patients? When is it appropriate? Can I trust it? We all have these questions; we all fce a collective kind of angst when it comes to embracing our visionary side, because it has bee so divorced from who we are.

My intention is to help make intuition a conscious spiritual practice available in every second of your being here. Tune into this conscious connection by communing with the inner voice, listening to dreams, listening to the body, sensing energies - all ways to interrelat with the world.

This excerpt comes from one of my favorite books, Women of Wisdom: Empowering the Dreams & Spirit of Women. I turn to it for inspiration and often just when I feel I need to have a conversation with a wise woman. I make a cup of tea and talk to one or several of the women included within its pages.

This week the WOW book is doing a special promotion. I think it's worth checking out.

I invite you to go to this page - www.wisewomanpublishing.com/womenofwisdom.html - to access the order page and the go back to this page and enter your confirmation code and your email address. that willt ake you to the sign up page for the Women of Wisdom newsletter. Once you join the WOW book group, you will be sent an email with a link to the bonus gifts that are available to the people who buy the book today. You can later opt out of being on the women of Wisdom newsletter list, if you choose.

Catching a Fallen Dream, Part I

Last week in the middle of getting ready for an art walk, a dream catcher fell off the wall. My business partner, Kristie, asked "Can you catch that fallen dream?" As I bent over to grab it I felt the world pause. "Catch the fallen dream" echoed in my head and I knew Spirit was trying to get my attention.

What fallen dream?

This unanswered question got lost in the scurry of activity that often precedes the First Friday Art Walk here in Ellensburg. It was then buried under other obligations and tasks that seemed so important in the moment. But over the next 3 weeks I noticed that everytime I had a minute or two of quiet - my heart felt heavy. As the weeks progressed I began to also notice a little bit of panic growing.

I feel even in this moment of writing this blog the heavy heart, the slight panic and a seemingly unpassable barrier between where I am and where I know I need to be. Suddenly, there just does not seem to be enough room, light or air here. Although my memory is understandably hazy, it seems reminiscent of the birth canal. It's really tight and a bit uncomfortable here, but it's oh so familiar....

I wonder to myself if someone could just do a caesarian on me. But as this thought forms I immediately dismiss it. Perhaps that's what I have been waiting for: someone else to make things happen for me. That certainly has not worked well. The panic keeps rising.

So I spend some time in introspection looking back over the last few years. From this perspective I see that the barrier is certainly not unpassable. I have been moving through it for about two years and am just about ready to break through to the other side. It's the lasst push that has me in a panic.

I'm tired. No two ways about it. I'm simply tired of the resistance. And I'm beginning to think I got a little lost along the way. There was the man that distracted me, the dreams of other people that I supported, my fears, getting settled in a new community, finding a spiritual community, my fears, .... I'm feeling pretty angry about this time.

If I was in labor, they'd tell me I was in transition. That's the part where the woman looks at the father of the baby she's delivering and yells something like, "YOU did this to me, you're never touching me again!" Having assisted with labor and delivery, I know this is usually a very short period of time and it heralds the end of the labor.

So I'm coaching myself to breathe and telling myself it won't be long now. The beauty of being in transition is that there's no turning back, it's unavoidable. All you can do at this point is surrender and let the resistance fall. It's the only way through.

When I see you on the other side - I expect a party!

One Drop

Some afternoon around every full moon, you will find me singing down at the Yakima River. I go - often with other travellers - to renew my connection and commitment to this planet I share with all my brothers and sisters.

We begin with simple song, a reminder to set aside the details of everyday life and move into communion with all around us. Without fail comes a moment when I can hear and feel everything around me listening. I listen back. As listening to each other deepens, everything slows to a quiet symphony of breath, buzzing, and breezes. Within this sweet moment of shared connection, vitality surges and flows along each strand of the web of which we are all a part.

Within this experience of deep connection, an awareness of each part heightens; individual trees, grasses, flowers, bees, limbs, cells, droplets of water - all chorus their presence and acceptance of their part.

We take several moments within this symphony and then move our awareness to one drop of water. We welcome our drop of water, back from its journey. Perhaps since it was last here at this river, it travelled to Siberia or South Africa or Turkey. Maybe it was once part of my body or my neighbor's or someone across the globe's. Maybe Charlie Chaplin, Constantine, Marie Curie or Cleopatra drank it. Did it come from Chernobal, the Serengeti, Tazmania, Harlem, Easter Island? Did it fall on my tongue 45 years ago in Ohio on a hot summer day as I danced and sang in the falling rain? Will it become the juice of a cherry to be eaten by a mouse, who becomes a hawk's dinner or perhaps a part of a peach that becomes a jar of baby food eaten by my granddaughter?

The possibilities are endless and I know that at some point, I or some other of my Relations will meet this particular drop again - just as many did before me. It links us across time and space. This sacred drop of water brings and sustains life.

We sit with it in love, respect and gratitude. Then expand our awareness again to the many other drops that create this river that flows into the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean and to the world. I acknowledge that I am made up of mostly water. The river that flows within me is a reflection of and is reflected by the river flowing in front of me. We are one.

What I do to myself, I do to the waters of Earth. What I do to the waters of Earth, I do to myself. I offer blessings and commit myself to continued healing for myself, my community and Earth, Mother Gaia. I am Gilgaia - servant of the earth and served by Earth.

We sing again. We listen to the song of the river and sing it back. This is RiverSong or Singing the River. It calls the river to its most authentic and whole self. It heals and strengthens. We become stronger and healthier - and the ripples continue.

I go to Sing the Rivers often as part of my work. During a meditation while I was on sabbatical in Ohio, the Maumee River taught me this and asked me to sing the rivers to heal them. Having studied Dr. Emoto's work, I understood this intellectually as well as intuitively.

I invite you to Sing the Rivers in your own way. Love, respect and gratitude are powerful. Send it out and open to receiving it back.