As My Wheel Turns

 As I lay here tonight there's no sleep to be had no matter what I do it just won't come. This year has been so difficult for so many of us but yet we all carry on, but really what else are we supposed to do? Giving up is something I've never done, no matter how hard it is, my feet just keep moving forward on the road below me, even though I can't see it....my heart knows it's there.....with each step it materializes underneath me....or so I hope.

I imagine life back when I was a child, I never really thought it would be this way....but which of us really imagined life in a realistic way as a teenager? When young you think there is so much time to grow, learn and experience life....as each year passes you think there is an abundance of time to catch up to your dreams.....the years though, they fly by and before you realize a half century has passed....the kids have grown, some still love you and others, well, you are everything they love to hate....a sometimes unavoidable consequence of having children with people who end up being abusive and hateful themselves.....if only there were do-overs for the choices of our youth....of course that is not possible.

I find myself here as my 52nd birthday approaches...it's been an interesting life so far...there has been joy, happiness and much heartache.... A life filled with abuse, domestic violence, and things that can never be forgotten. So many years you would think that it would be easy to forget, but it isn't. In reality every moment of our Lives shapes every coming moment of our Lives... So while we may not carry the anger, the regret or the pain any longer, we will forever carry the experience.....in every cell of our being, the memory resides and when you're really lucky-insert sarcasm- the wonderful PTSD will remind you, over and over again.

Of course this is not to say that I have not had a good life, I have...I've had so much joy, I've had so much love. After my first incarnation in marriage, I swore I'd never do it again. I was convinced that there was no way that I was going to live under the thumb of any other man. What had started with so much love had ended so brutally that I was nowhere near thinking that there was ever going to be a way to find happiness with another man, hell with anybody man, woman didn't matter I was just done. Now as I lay next to my old guy I realize that if there was one thing I could change, it would be to go back to when I was 15 and to walk away from the first one. I would have waited to meet him, but but no matter how much I wish it's not a possibility...even after almost 24 yrs, I want more time, endless time with him...if I could turn back the clock, and relive the life that I wish I had done with him, I would...Oh how the choices would have been different..... It's funny I always think that I've let go of all of this, then this time of year comes...it starts to get cold, the leaves start to change...The familiar chill comes in the air and I know that it's not going to be long and my wheel of the year will turn... Maybe it's just the getting older, maybe it's the hindsight, I may never really know what it is but this time of year brings about the melancholy... 

The feeling that there's there has to be more than this, there has to be more than the struggle...the struggle to be heard, to be seen, to be acknowledged...somehow when you're young you just think this shit will be all worked out by the time you're old.....then you get older and realize that age has nothing to do with having all your shit together... But maybe it's never really about having your shit together and it's more just about walking on, not giving up...Maybe it's just about trying to do better today than you did yesterday...

52, wow, there are more years behind me than there are ahead of me now...there are still so many things I don't know, and no matter how I try to convince myself there will be always things that I regret... But there are some things that I do know...I fought hard to break free...I scraped and clawed my way to me, and I like me...my babies, the best parts of my life, amazing humans that I love to the end of the galaxy and beyond, just for them it was all worth it....and call me stupid but I still believe that one day I won't struggle anymore...I will find the peace I so truly desire, birthing my art, crafting magic and making love to each day....then I realize I already have this now....just need to remember to tune out the noise.....haters gonna hate, no matter what I do, I will just need to remember to turn up the music more.

These are the musings that keep me up tonite, September, the turning of my wheel.....

Hunker down and Breathe

To say that life has changed for us would be an understatement....and to say that us is just my family would be another massive understatement! Life has changed for pretty much every single one of us on the planet right now....and if it hasn't, then WTF is wrong with you? 2020 came in like a diseased lion and we are all feeling it.

Some of us like me are on self isolation, others on forced quarantine and many others sadly have left us and fallen to this current virus that is sweeping the world...this is scary shit, this is one of those moments we have heard about in history class, you know where we heard about all those people dying....thousands and thousands of people....this is that time for us......for those that don't believe this is actually happening, please do tell me how do you explain the virtual death toll tickers? please don't! each morning I wake up and look at that ticker and send a prayer for all the souls that have left us.....these are sad times....

I wish I knew what to say to make this better, but I don't think there is a way to do that right now...all there is the truth that this moment will change lives. Anyone that thinks that things will look the same when this is over is deluding themselves....no matter what things will be different...there cannot be so much death around the world and it not affect you even in the furthest corner of the world, it will affect you.....breathe, take that in.....and then get ready to get on with it....if you are like me you can't stop there, you can't just sit and think of this over and over, it will eat you alive....so like I said take it in....accept that this is happening around you and you cannot change a thing.....breathe......realize that it is happening to every single person you know too....every single person around you....every single person that you don't know too....in that hugeness and immense reality is the grain of peace that I found for my myself...everyone is coming from the same place right now, feeling the same things, same fears, same realities, same challenges.....we are truly in this together.

We are watching governments working together, albeit somewhat begrudgingly but they are doing it....aid packages are coming....even though many wonder - me included - if they will come in time to help or not...it gets dicey when you live as a low income family with chronic illness...asthmatics, compromised immune systems, brain tumour, diabetes and heart disease and the aged....ding ding ding all in this house.....so many of you out there with us in this boat right now. Breathe, keep going and find something to keep your mind occupied...learn a new skill, take a class online....remember to breathe.....reach out to others....there are so many wonderful offerings on Facebook and other social media platforms for things like virtual meditation, paint parties, coffee with friends and so much more that are all free...use them, join them, make connections with people...Udemy has classes and like them, there are other platforms that do the same....personally I am thinking of how to start a live video to interact with all of you....what shall I discuss? what would you like me to tackle? let me know, it might help it happen faster!

I know I haven't really given you anything to help here, no big words of spiritual advice, more of a practical approach and probably not one you haven't heard anywhere else, countless times....all I am doing is showing you I am there with you, working through my own mental health, lack and isolation....this shit is hard, I know....I feel you, I understand and I am here with you....feeling all the same things and these are the methods I am using to quell the fears that keep cropping up as each due date creeps up....you are not alone....breathe.....nothing you do right now is going to change the course of the next couple of months, other than staying put, practice physical distancing.....enjoy the time with your family.....and when the worry about how to keep food on the table creeps in....stop, breathe....start again.....you will make it through.

Hunker down

Meditate - if you can

Light your candles - if you do

Reach out when you need to

Be patient with people....we are all in the same boat

Remember to Breathe


Sending love, blessings and crooked smiles

As Spring approaches

As spring comes near the Sun starts warming up everything around us, the days grow longer as I look out my window and smile...things are good, I mean they are crazy in so many ways but they are good too, you know? My  life has never been easy not since the first damn breath when it was almost my last.....but yet here I am 51, still going, still fighting, still surviving and most importantly still thriving.

I do not wake up each day expecting roses and sunshine, no far from it....I wake up every day groggy and shaky, that is just the nature of the beast we call chronic illness, mornings are not so good....it takes time for me to build up that cortisol, but once its going I am grooving! There is always much to do around here, its a full day every day! That for the last almost year have overwhelmed me until I felt like I could do it no more....fast forward to today and here I am sitting munching on some stinky cheese and flax seed biscuits, sipping my tea and writing while appreciating my life, the good, the bad and the ugly...no my problems did not magically disappear, no void opened in the atmosphere and sucked all the oppressors in....nope didn't happen that way....what did happen was a new protocol.

Yes I know I have tried many others, some have worked well enough to keep me here, but I needed more, a more balanced and thorough approach. Luckily for me an amazing herbalist came into my life, by chance or by magic, it happened. A caring, kind, beautiful and very knowledgeable herbalist just happened to land in my life....just when I needed her most. The backslide into full on relapse for me started sometime in the summer....I spent most of it ill, barely being able to make it to weekly markets with just a few events thrown in, not enough to make a difference but enough to make me slide deeper into that agony I know so well....my writing stopped, my wire wrapping suffered and finally I found myself at the beginning of this year in a deep depression after the assault....I was lost in some space that was endless and deep let me tell you! even though I could see logically there were plenty of reasons to feel this way....I mean come on?!? look at it all clearly, my illness, my CPTSD, the flood, the assault.....add to that all the stuff going on with my family of course I was down deep in those dumps, as more just was dumped on me daily.....it was a never ending cycle that I found myself in.....I was functioning but not thriving, just barely surviving inside while I depleted everything giving to everyone else....it had to stop before I was lost for good.

Enter Correne from Spiraea Herbal Clinic + Apothecary , and yes she has a Facebook page, it is available here....follow her! trust me! she gives lots of info and teaches so much through her blog and page! it is worth it to anyone that wants to learn about the language of plants, she is fluent! Although through the months I have developed a personal relationship with her, seeing her in her herbalist capacity well, this was a totally different thing. I arranged to have a consultation with her, and when I went to it I wasn't totally sure what to expect since for me it was really the first time I have gone to a herbalist that actually made the tincture themselves....normally and in my experience with the Naturopaths it was something that they prescribed to me, but did not make themselves. This was different, but different is a welcome thing for me. As I sat there and opened up, of course I cried but yet I felt completely heard, about every aspect of my health, it all contributes to the whole. She spent at least and hour and a half going through every part of my day, what and how my body acts and reacts...how I felt inside, how I see things and how I would like to be, what I see for myself in my healing plan....I felt heard y'all! Can you believe it?

Now here I sit a week later, a whole week, shockingly it seems like it was a month ago for the amount of progress I feel....I have a different overall feeling, I mean the oppressors are all still there, the negative people have not disappeared, they are all still there with their downtrodden attitudes....that is not going to change any time soon but I have changed.....I did not notice at first how well this was working but here, today, I just stood my ground before writing this and left a discussion with my own heart intact and did not allow the ugliness of another to penetrate. I had already sat down to write and had thought that was now not going to happen, but nope, here I am clicking on these keys! I love to write and have felt so stifled not to lay down words and suddenly it feels like they are flowing again....my feeling of being overwhelmed, struggling under the strain seems to have left me. This is a wonderful thing!

Now I am not stupid and have been down the road of feeling better before, I know its not a one tincture kinda thing, its a lifelong commitment to fighting this chronic disease day after day, but it sure feels a helluva lot better to feel supported and listened to as I fight it, not to mention that the physical symptoms of it seem to be getting hit back too! I slept last night and for the first time in a long time, I did not wake up tired even though it was so late when I went to sleep and this I credit to her spring collection, the Iðunna Collection and my tinctures in combination broke through it all, so many changes in my outlook and my heart....then we have my WIRE!!! I crafted new pieces with my wire, all new, a beautiful Amethyst floating heart pendant....I feet like my wire and I have finally made up! Yes my hand still hurts from the assault, well one finger, but its an important one when wrapping! but yet I did it and these are the things that make me happy. Every damn day....never giving up, back to thriving.

Feeling centered and filled with sunshine, even though the problems are still there, even though I still have to figure out how to keep going in practical terms there is a lightness and hope that was lost under that big cloud that was hanging over me.

I am ready for the next phase of this healing! so lets bring it on!

Blessings of the coming spring to you!