Stubborn

I grew up in a household hearing classical music every day. My older sister practiced the piano 6 hours a day, and I would sometimes escape to the cow pasture away from the sound of repeated measures to the tick of the metronome (she went on to get her Masters in Piano Performance, and I cannot be more proud). Also, I honestly am in awe of my mom - she made sure we all (5 kids!!) had well-rounded childhoods. We all took piano lessons (in addition, for me, I took tap, ballet, jazz, weekly art classes, and flute lessons). I took piano lessons for two years, from ages 8-10, but had a teacher who, looking back, taught me an important lesson that means a lot even now. Children and animals can tell when they are barely tolerated, lol, and something deep in my immature, young heart really did everything I could to be the worst student ever, in a weird way, because I knew she didn't like me. I would practice the songs with the wrong fingering on purpose, and even though it would sound 100% correct, my teacher would say with exasperation, "Wrong again! Practice it the right way!" I do not know how I played Bach: Invention 4 with bad fingering with my small, child hands, and to this day, I can play this song from memory, but ONLY if I use the incorrect fingering. A bad way was etched in my mind. I think part of my life penance is to learn this piece with the correct fingering. And to send loving energy to my poor piano teacher. I'm sure my skinny, stubborn 8-10 year old self was a silent force to endure. Also, this story is proof I can be a stubborn @ss in my own way. 

Dear-o-deer

 There are many days when I feel like I don't belong on this planet. At all. Never did. I feel like a deer that has been walking carefully and with purpose her whole life, only to walk into landmines, exploding my own legs off trying to save people. 

I don't understand anything. I know this is part of my journey to learn, but my whole life, I've always been careful about where I place my trust, although I always love. To me, words, carelessly and cruelly spoken, are hard to come back from. Cruel words are shrapnel in the soul that can be forgiven, but there is always a scar. This is why, in my own sacred pact, I've vowed to never use words to hurt others. In all things, pause, reflect, then share. 

I know that from past childhood trauma, my first instinct is to soothe and save others who are emotionally in turmoil. But then somewhere along the lines, I feel overpowered, drained, and then ultimately disrespected, treated poorly, and even verbally abused when I try to reclaim autonomy and space when I stop engaging in dysfunctional healing. I've become better over the years recognizing this pattern, and recent affirmations have confirmed that I need to be careful to NOT give too much of myself in healing others. 

Mostly..,it makes me incredibly wary of giving my trust and vulnerability to others. Ultimately, in this world, I truly do walk alone. I know one of my life journeys is to learn to proclaim my value, and not give myself away in the wrong ways. Better to keep my own legs and show others how to run on their own legs. 

I am learning better boundaries so it doesn't get to this point. 

A memory or dream?

 *I had the most vivid dream last night about past life and soulmate. It felt so real. I feel like I could write a whole book about it*

I saw in his eyes the glittering of a place I couldn't quite remember. A place that I knew deep inside me, like the wells of the deepest place. Only an echo remained

When he slid his hands down my back and gripped me closer, I knew this grip, this belonging. And I was falling into a place that had no thought or reason, only feeling. The feeling of being swallowed whole - sliding and soaring - thunderous, a soundless scream. And ecstasy. 

And he knew the price of this, and I knew the price, but how I gave in, nothing close enough. His black eyes, relentless, scorched into my soul, "you are mine, mine, mine."

His world was dark, and he was sad somehow.  It was a dim planet with light that was not pitch black, and not twilight. In-between. Bubbles of soft light floated around, and in the gentle glow I saw animals around me with huge orb, alien eyes - curious, watching - as I glided past on his arm. He took me Home. A home of darkness, and glowing, and knowing, and magic. 

After that, I don't remember much. As if someone took a book from the library of my mind, and now that story is missing. But I can feel the hole where it used to be. Nothing can fill that space. 

Now, I was in a world of light, The price of that love was having no memory of it moving forward. Just a strange haunted feeling, a shadow you can't pull into a shape. How quickly it moves on. How I wished I could go back. But you can never go back. 

Handstand progress!

 

Winter Solstice dream

 I had a very interesting Winter Solstice dream last night. In my dream, I was running down this narrow, canyon trail towards an abyss. I kept passing donkeys laden with luggage who were also heading into the abyss. Once I got to the bottom, it was not a dark place. It was a beautiful springtime meadow with lots of white light and rays of sunshine and horses everywhere. So much peace. A man was taming the horses and teaching children how to ride them. 

Then I was a very old woman, but looked young. I was rubbing someone's back, almost like soothing a baby. The person said, "don't stop; this makes me feel grounded." I knew there was something in my hands that was making that person feel healed, so I didn't stop. 

I wish I could draw realistically this place. The horses looked like heaven horses. But I never thought a place like that could be found in an abyss. Maybe that's the perspective of being on one side as opposed to the other...?

Little story I'm writing/painting these days...keep your sense of wonder, always!

 

Handstand progress!!!

 Super grateful to have found this class - www.davidstickler.com. 

Dream from Nov 13th

I had another waiting dream, except this time, I was at the airport, waiting to go somewhere, but I didn't know where. I saw Matthew McConaughey sitting in a chair, waiting. I went up to him, and at first he seemed exhausted, like "oh, another fan." But then I made a joke, "don't you know who "I" am?" And then he beamed out the biggest smile and stood up to hug me like a family reunion, but I suddenly noticed a toddler holding a sharp pencil while trying to crawl up on a nearby chair, so I rescued the toddler and took the sharp pencil out of his hand. I'm writing all the dreams down that have a lot of detail. Usually, in my dreams, I listen and observe and wait. 

I'm not someone with the best self-confidence (but working on it), so I just thought that this dream was interesting, because I used my own voice to claim an equality of existing, and from that came love, acceptance, helping others.

Some drawings

 

 I went for a walk around my neighborhood and saw a man go by in an old, yellow roadster convertible. There was a huge, shaggy dog sitting next to him in the front, just like a person. The dog was bigger than the man and was intently looking forward like he was the driver. Maybe the dog actually was driving. I tried drawing it, but I'm not good at realistic stuff. Somehow the car looks more alive...

Magic

 Today, I took my SUP out - launched from Del Monte and went almost to Lovers. I was just out there between the red bell buoy and Lovers, sitting on my board, feeling the wind, and praying. I've been praying for signs lately...signs that I'm on the right path (on every level) and signs for my purpose. Well, it's hard for me to ask for things that I need, but I just needed a little bit of magic today. Reminders that I'm seen and loved for who I am.

While I was sitting, I saw a fin, and my first thought was...oh, maybe a shark? But then there was spouting, so I knew it was a dolphin. I paddled towards it, and then was circled by a pod of Rissos, maybe 20-30, all feeding. One popped up right next to my SUP, and it startled me. I sang the "Ole Aloha" chant to them, stuck my arms in the ocean, and sent loving prayers of thanks for this beautiful gift. Then I cried, lol, because it was so, so beautiful (I'm not much of a crier, so the release as tears of gratitude instead of sorrow was wonderful). I stayed with them for an hour; they ate their lunch around me, while I just sat and thought and prayed.

Then when I got back to the beach, I laid on my belly on the sand. I saw a little girl, maybe 2, running around with just a huge diaper on. She had blond hair and big blue eyes and she was so joyful. She saw me watching her, and ran over and squatted down to my eye level. I thought she was going to kiss my nose, she got so close, but she just looked deep into my eyes with such open joy, and said in a feathery, fairy voice, "hi!" Oh, my heart melted! It reminded me of me when I was that age, and also of what my daughter might look like, if I had a daughter.

I know we are all going through some dark forests of heartaches/struggles/worries, but I just wanted to share this. It reminded me that we are all worthy to ask for what we need, we are worthy to ask for moments of magic.

Dream

 I had a dream last night. In the dream, I was in the ocean, swimming. Suddenly, I was lifted up, up, up in a huge tsunami wave; higher, higher, higher, until I was at the very top of the wave, so high I was close to outer space. At the top, I was perfectly balanced, and waited for the moment when I would freefall straight down either the frontside or the backside of the wave. I waited for the feeling in my stomach of falling and of fear, but it didn't come. I just had a feeling of letting go. Suddenly, the wave was gone, as if it had never existed, and I was back in the ocean. Then another wave came, higher than the first. I saw it coming this time. I thought, surely I would not make it through this one, but once again, I felt my body turn to the same stuff as the wave and was lifted up to the top. Let go, let go, let go. Then I woke up. What is in this dream to teach me...peace and not fearing what will come, being like water, and trusting through even the scariest situation....everything we face is a teacher.

Question

I asked myself,
My heart,
My soul - 
What is your purpose?
Why are you here?
To love, to love, to love.
Sometimes I feel I might explode
and it scares me.
I feel emotions of others and pain
An ocean all around, always.
I see, feel helpless, want to embrace all the parts that are cracked in all that exists. 
Some days, I feel so small.
An observer and disconnected, gathering.
Quaking in the truth of the separateness,
Longing for connection.
What is this life and our purpose?

Every day, if it is my last day, did I love? 

Deeper

 When my heart is torn in two, even after healing,

the edges don't line up perfectly.
I feel the puckered seams.
There are places that aren't smooth.
Reminders. And wisdom of loss.
But not holes where I'm snagged or lost.
Just memories that are not my future.
Though some days, they cast a shadow and threaten to rob me of the day's sun.
The whispered lies of "not enough" -
How do you release something that is part of you now?
How do you live with something that sometimes pricks you to pain?
You breathe in and out,
send love to the pain,
and send love to yourself.
Beneath a scar is deeper love,
a teacher with wide arms
To hold others in their own rivers of loss.

Enough

 

You matter.

You are enough.

The grit and sorrow of life
Does not take your shine,
Or make you less worthy
Of the same light you show others.

Whatever voices that tell you
You are not enough
To be loved,
To be treated with dignity -
Show those voices
The power of love
And acceptance -
A song you write in your soul
And sing with your life.

(words by me, after reflection on a yellow sky and my heart)

Bone Days

 
Sometimes I feel like I'm just my frame of bones,
My muscles, sinew, skin all fled
Inside I rattle, upheld.

If feeling's a sound, I knock together

in a rhythm that calls out:

Where are you heart?

Where are you skin?

Where are you strength?

I'm just a frame sometimes.

Then I wake up the next day,

And find everything where it is supposed to be

All together.

I'm not sure why these bone days happen.

They used to scare me.

But maybe they are supposed to happen,

so I can remember that even in loneliness

I can make music. 

The percussion of myself

is just laying frame,

before the melody can land again. 

Gold showing

Bits of gold showing through,
Heart abloom,
Life anew

Meeting

Nearby, a white Egret, seemingly weightless, on the seaweed. On my back in the water, floating and embraced, the fog low and the smooth ocean meeting, I felt the infinite.

An old memory

I just fell in love with Taylor Swift's "Hoax" on her new album. It totally reminded me of someone I lost. Heartbreak is never easy to navigate; like being lost in a storm with no compass. There are things in life you can't fence up, wall in, or cut out of the soul. You just have to learn to live with the longing and the absence of someone or something you hoped for. It isn't a death, but in some ways it is. That ghost of yourself is left behind as you step out in a new, raw skin, pink and delicate and vulnerable to the realities of life.

I wrote this shortly after the loss and it is amazing to me how we can feel so deeply to our depths and still find a way to keep going.

The keening of the wind
was not the wind, but me
Though my lips are closed
My soul, in anguished silence, cries

Holding sand + feeling sun

Nestled in the warm sand at Asilomar, my fingers trace designs in the sand as the layers of blue, white, gray above melt and dance with the sun. I say a prayer. I am open to abundance. With arms open wide, my whole self I embrace. With grace and dignity, I face each moment for what it is. In letting go, I surrender to a trust, in knowing the best for me isn't what I grasp for, like sand running through a clenched fist. What is best for me comes with light, joy, and freedom - the sun between the clouds, warming my open palms. Infinite tenderness wraps around my shoulders. I'm not alone and in this belonging, I'm always home.

Dingle + Anam Cara

I had a dream last night, unlike any other I’ve had. I believe it is a healing dream. There are a handful of dreams I know will stay with me always, and this is one of them.

In my dream, I walked away from something I had been longing for because I knew that it was not what would make me whole. I was faced with accepting it and losing part of myself, or leaving it and trusting the abundance of blessing that was yet unknown to me. I said “no” to what would make me less whole and walked away from it. Suddenly, I was walking down a cobblestone road, with tall, old buildings on either side. An old woman came out of a shop and looked at me with eyes that saw me. She gave me a piece of paper and a pen and said, “where would you say people should go that is best for them?” She turned around and hunched her shoulder so that I could have a place to write. I wrote a word in cursive on the paper (more on that below). Then, when she turned back around, I was filled with incredibly love and gratefulness to her. I had no words to say. There was nothing good enough to hold the feeling of gratefulness. I held out my hand, and grasped hers and said thank you without speaking. She drew me into a hug, and while I was hugging her, she pressed both her hands deeply into the spine between my shoulder blades. It was like trigger point therapy and something suddenly released inside me. My entire heart and core was vibrating and it felt like my soul was soaring through time and space, hot and cold at the same time, and glowing. I wasn't sure if my body could contain this feeling, and wondered if I might fly apart. Then the old woman said to me gently, “this is where your soul starts.” Then I woke up.

I think this old shop woman was part of me. 

Also, the word that I wrote down on the paper in cursive was “Dingle”. When I was 18, I studied abroad in Ireland. I was in heaven, learning Irish History, Literature, and Folklore, and spending every spare minute walking/hiking or traveling to all the forests I could. While there, I traveled to Dingle, Ireland, which is a very magical place. I remember standing on the beach in Dingle, and the color of the sea such a light, icy blue, with the pulsating green hills around me. My bare feet were nestled in the pebbly sand as the waves licked up. I felt grounded and also like I had always been there. In one moment, I felt incredibly small in the vastness of eternity and everything, and at the same time, incredibly connected to everything and everyone. I’ve since learned that Dingle is a “thin space”, or a place of energy, where the veil between this world and the eternal world is thin. The dream also made me think of the old Gaelic word “Anam Cara”, which means “soul friend”. There are people you meet in life who accompany you on the deep soul journey as you encounter your destiny and become closer with God. Sometimes in life, you meet people and when you make eye contact it’s like something claps you in your soul and you are filled with the sense of immense recognition and being truly seen, all the way to your depths, and your heart cries out, “THERE you are!!” Maybe these people are cut from the same heart cloth, I don’t know, but it is a rare and special gift.

Ocean morning dip

I am resistant to discomfort, yet willing to submit my senses to this; with the silky slip of belonging, I'm filled to the brim with joy. In this moment, submerged in the ocean, the feel of the water and the buoyancy and release slows the pendulum inside me to a new, gentle rhythm. It's a wonderful morning.

Cleaning and scrap paper poems rediscovered

I cleaned house today and found some old poems I wrote on scrap paper. It's interesting to find discarded poems. I remember writing them and feeling frustrated with them; sometimes words can't hold our feelings and are just scratches on a vast plain of our hearts, and there seems to be no release. However, I'm going to let the poems live in the world, as they decided to show up to me again. Maybe they will help someone navigating a similar pain:

**

The storm would come and it must and it did, drowning out the tired song until the haunting stopped.

**

It sits with me, this memory;
The moment of what if
is now aglow
in paintings wild, and faulting words.
The sharpness of the moment
Erodes my present form.
Maybe someday the edges of loss won't cut
my heart as I look back.

**

My shadow sits beside me,
and mirrors life I lead each day.
My shadow, longer growing--
Growing dark where dreams decay
My soul, light, in life's rich soil.
Shadows stretch out, choke, and spoil.
I think of beauty, hope, and sun,
Softly blooming still...I'm not done.

**

I thought I'd sail to wild north
with snowy peaks and ice blue seas;
I'd build my nest in barren trees.
But winds pushed me on to foggy skies,
Dark green moss and soulful ties.
I land on coast and daring sea
The clouds above wander free.

Dreams

For about a year, I have been having a recurring dream where I'm in my bed and a dark force/shape is in my room. In my dream, I am too scared to look at it, but I plead for it to go away and it ends up killing me.

Last night, it was different. In my dream, I was in my bed sleeping, but I was also watching myself from above. The dark shape was in my room, with an evil aura. I sat up in bed, and I stared directly at it, and I ordered it to go away. The dark shape squeezed my throat and took away my voice, but I kept thinking in my head "go away, I'm not afraid!" and then the dream ended. When I woke up, my throat was so sore as if I'd been screaming all night. I do not think this dream will oppress me anymore.

Take a breath and wait 5 minutes...

"Take a breath and wait 5 more minutes."

That's how I've gotten through many things in my life that seemed impossible. The morning I was supposed to take my flight to start classes at UCLA, I was so scared of failure and living in a big city (a huge change for a Missouri farm girl) that I was going to tell my dad that I didn't want to go. My suitcase was by the front door and I told myself, "just wait 5 minutes and then tell him you don't want to go." I kept telling myself that until I got on the plane. Ultimately, going to UCLA was an amazing experience that helped me grow in a lot of ways. I graduated summa cum laude (and I also realized people get annoyed when I introduced myself as "My name is Melissa; I grew up on a farm!"). Haha, to wake up to a bellowing cow...I miss those days.

There are other memories that pop up - moments when I put my feelings aside in order to just keep moving (paddling in scary conditions in a SoCal with no chase boats around, driving my niece out of Redding during the Carr Fire, teaching Honors Chemistry). Sometimes in life, we have to just keep taking those steps to be brave, even when it isn't something that we feel is big. But anytime we stretch our courage muscles, it IS big. We all face fear, challenges, and heartbreak...how we journey through it is a victory.

Heavenly Realm

 
My dear friend took this photo of me this morning during a dawn beach walk. I've been struggling with some things and feeling lost in the fog of depression, loneliness, and like there is difficulty finding anything to look forward to. Then this morning happened, with such beautiful light; it is like a hug and a reminder to keep taking one day at a time, because you never know what morning you may wake up to.

The Knot

A prisoner of the knot, not enough;
How to dissolve this, I don't know,
But I feel myself grow.
I feel myself feel the way to truth -
to find I watered this beast and tethered it to myself;
Bound to the weight,
because it was safer to be held than to be free.
I don't know what I shall be without it.
I will be me.

Pray tell, Well?

I've been writing little poems and painting quick watercolors to go with them. Here's one I did today:

An echo in an empty well
hobbled up the stones
and sang in fading tones
sorrow from my soul.
I gave into that empty space
pieces of my heart,
dropping slowly, part by part -
waiting, hoping, fading.
It's too deep to clearly see
What is looking back at me.
So I turn and look up high
To places I can't see,
And pray the words that I let fly
Will bring an answer back to me.

Between

Today was a gift, and a strange blend of sadness and joy. Today was a day where I felt the divide between memories and now. I sat between where the ocean was vivid blue and steel gray, with clouds edging away from the morning sun. I didn't realize how I was gasping, or how desperate my spirit was, until I felt the swell of the ocean rise under me and thunder forward. It is strange how we can go about our days, almost starving for something we're not sure of, until we figure it out. The swell of joy afterwards is almost painful.

And today, I tried to paint something really silly, but the otter's eyes look crazy, and watercolor is really hard when you are trying to control the colors. I feel like I'm on the edge of figuring something out, but I'm just at the edges trying to feel my way in.

Watercolor shapes

I'm trying to remember how to paint with watercolors. It is fun to see the colors swirl together in unpredictable ways - you really have to give up control and let the paints surprise you. I tried painting a watercolor version of a recent acrylic painting, and I noticed that in this watercolor version, there is a dragon shape facing the ducky. Art usually uncovers something we are not totally aware of and it can be uncomfortable to face. I think this dragon is nice, though.