Helene About Mike

I would say Mike came into your life as a gateway of showing what love can be and also showing for himself what love can be. You didn’t do anything wrong, and remember that you were not the one who backed away, for whatever reason he did, it was something, it was fear, or it was his son, or whatever it was. And I can really feel that when you were starting to fantasize about Mike (after E1) you were discovering that this is relationship with Chris is not safe, this is not really a good relationship. You were never acknowledged that you are beautiful, that you are good enough, you were never confirmed in those and many ways. When you met Chris, he shows you that he is one person but then when you’re married he shows you the other person because then you are in prison. 

It’s so interesting that you tell me that when you were 21 you were working in a prison. You see women being targeted, abused, addiction, in so many, many difficulties, crazy, fear, anger, everything you see that. And you can stand there. And you know, there are not many women who can stand there, in your own journey you can stand there because you hold your own house. So what you were doing, you put little Debby in a prison so that no one can touch her around the fence. They can’t take the core of you, the core is always there. When you are 21 you started to work in prison and to understand women… what is a woman? What is really the world, what is really love, what is a relationship? So you learn by observation, you learn by experience and you are following that stream of being, of living in a survival mode, but you are living in that. 

And then you meet Mike when you are 22 and he decides to leave his wife and his son which for a 22 year old that hadn’t really had the school or life or of being a woman it becomes a wow effect. He’s doing this for me, he is seeing me, and it becomes emotional, maybe from him even more the emotion, but it becomes emotional. You haven’t done anything or anything wrong, he is the one withdrawing it so the question is what is it in his system that makes him withdraw? What makes him not hold to a relationship and to not step out. That stands on him. And he is giving you a gift. He is giving you the gift that this is how love can feel. You know the euphoric feeling you can have when you are sitting with someone, or a peaceful feeling by sitting side by side with someone who understands you beyond the words. And it becomes a longing in you. This girl, this young woman in you… it’s not that you become obsessed with him, it’s not obsession, its proof of the existence of love and he becomes the love proof. He is the proof and that is why the fantasy is arising (after E1). The terror of diseases (also after E1) that if I change myself maybe this love will not have me. I need to stay as I am because maybe if he comes back I will be there... (I'm a little lost...?) So it becomes these two parallels, maybe different worlds, one is living underneath in your subconscious and one is living consciously in your space. So the longing for him is an expression, what I am longing for, but he is the expression of that. He’s the form of that. It is not being obsessed. He is the key of what love can be. He’s the form of that. 

Your mother is the form of what invisible trauma can be and your father is the form of what visible trauma and abuse can be. And Chris becomes a form of where he shows his concern, he’s kind of showing that he’s a trustworthy man, but when you are married, when you are in prison with him, then the abuse starts because then he has full control. And that abuse is a reaction to his own journey. And that has nothing to do with you. 

When two traumatized people are living together the frequency is never aligned. It’s being done automatically, we are fine tuning throughout the days. With Mike for those 3 ½ months there was no needing of fine tuning. There was one tuning, one frequency, and you shared this frequency. And they say that when you meet these kind of people in life where you share one frequency, like Mike, this person becomes the proof of what a man should be. He became the icon of that; that this is how I love a woman. You haven’t done anything wrong. But you didn’t have anyone who encouraged you or inspired you like when you were doing your hair when you were young, beautiful clothes, instead it was correction. Either that this is perfect, now we go, or no, you have to follow the rules that controlled everything domestically. 

So this space that you have shared with Mike is a beautiful space, it’s a beautiful space, and that is the space that I would suggest for you to keep you in your heart. It’s a beautiful space. Also something to say thank you for that he showed you this, that metaphorically he gave you that this is how love feels. And then that he couldn’t hold that, it has to do with him, not you. It is something that is inside of him. It can be fear of feeling intense emotions. When people feel this overwhelming love, either they stay or they run. 

(I talk about Mike being my father and Chris being my mother… ) So, we say that Mike was your father and Chris was your mother. So, you have all these experiences of these two but one thing is that with all this experience you can really see that if you look at value, if we look at you as a woman, as of value, as worthy, we take gold seeds from Mike because he really showed what love can be. He could express it, with his whole body I can feel he can express it, so he could share it. And if you look at Chris, he’s more closed or unavailable emotionally. It shows that often through life we often mirror our mother and our father. 

And it’s not fair against yourself for you to take away this whole experience of Mike. It is not fair to yourself. He taught you a lot. He was there for a reason. And your emotions are your emotions, no one can take that away from you. So when you are experiencing something, like an emotion in present time it can be a memory but it lives in you, it’s something that needs to come up and be expressed. And when it comes to Mike, he’s really afraid of living, he’s really afraid of emotions, but it’s really not to be erased, it’s not to be erased. This has been your life and to go there is understandable. You feel so much, you feel this, you feel that, you feel abandoned, etc., etc., but really, looking at your life, how can it be otherwise? So it’s just to be very kind and humble with yourself. I know that it’s hard, I’ve been there, and it’s really, really difficult. And also to remember that you have so many belief systems that become the proof of life for you. You have the right to choose. And you have the right to go into remembering this space with Mike. (I tell her that he walks with me in nature, that I want to share the really good things with him. That the two years Nora and I talked about this changed me but didn’t eradicate him. It’s the things like the nature, the light, like the painting that I want so much to share with him, that I do feel that I do share with him.) What is also beautiful in this is that you choose life, you choose actively life today and to do that there will come moments when it will reflect into the more heart spaces. And there is what we call soul twins, two people with deep soul connections where you feel like you know each other even though you don’t know each other. That is what pulled you together without even words.

Sunol & Grandmother Sycamore

 Three Haiku from Sunol

as the sun crests the hills
the great horned owls calls out
I rush to the creek

fall turns to winter
the shrill call of wood ducks brings
new paths to the creek

this holy valley
the fading autumn's light glows
amber on water

Grandmother Sycamore

There is this one tree
her body strange in shape and size
gnarled and broken
flouncy skirted roots exposed
how she leans away and is
split wide from womb to heart
as though a river has run
through her
as though sculpted by darkness
and the soft hands of
benevolence~
a stunning work of art
the way her skin peels and molts
the way lovely green mosses cover
her flanks and her breasts
her buddha belly
daughter, mother, grandmother
dressed in autumn
upon whose lap nature
places her precious offerings
all that is spent and decaying
her own leaves and others
welcomed
as she lives on
maiden, woman, crone
both giving and receiving
sheltering all in need of home
winged and legged
ample bosom upon which I
long to fling my own form this fine
near winter morning~
kindred spirit, beloved earth goddess
barely recognizable as
herself
yet still quivering, still dancing
in the quiet stillness of dawn
still reaching for sun
and moon, for the sustenance
of rain and flowing water,
still rooted and alive
joyous and beautiful

A Haiku-ish Start

 

Goldfinch in the creek
water and feathers dance
this quiet nook has found us both

Leaves the color of the heart Sun
alder or elm I do not know
beauty finds me deep within

Ruffles of white
spill like lace over small stones
takes me with it

This tree
that so longs to live
inspires

Sunol Regional Wilderness

Vesta

 

I am the goddess Vesta, known to the Greeks as Hestia, and I am truly honored to have this time with you this morning. Very simply, I represent the Center, or better put, the Heart: I am the Heart of the Temple, the Heart of the Hearth, the Heart of the Self. I am a Virgin Goddess, meaning that I am whole-unto-myself, my own person, needing no other person to complete me. I not only tend to the Eternal Flame, I am that; the vital life spark and spirit which burns at the Heart of all that is. I reflect the light of all that is sacred, and so brightly do I burn that the largest asteroid in our sky is named for me. My totem is the circle, symbol of infinity and wholeness. Focus, commitment, devotion, discernment, and sacred sexuality are my divinity.

I am the essence of Being, for I simply Am. There are no statues attesting to my life because how do you create form from the formless? In this, I am the essential and divine feminine, for I love and honor being over doing. I am the least known and visible of all of my sister goddesses for my way of being is foreign to those who now run the world. As with my sisters, my story has been twisted based on fear, misunderstanding, and the pursuit of ownership and power. They have taken my sacred sexuality and made it a sin punishable by death. They have taken my devotion and manipulated and used it for their own gain. But I tell you this, my temple priestesses were among the very last to capitulate to the conquering Roman church. They fear me because they cannot control me. They despise me because they cannot understand me with their minds for I am a felt sense, and I do not need to do in order to be. I find the sacred in the everyday, in the mundane, in the ordinary. I find the holy in each moment. In truth, I am the sacred; I am the holy; I am the moment. 

I am your indwelling spirit, your inner-most being, your aliveness; your own sacred, your own holy. Though I am veiled and a mystery, you know me innately and intimately, and I am here with you always. I cannot not be for this is who you are, what gives you life itself. I am not your story, your past, what you believe in, nor am I the labels you wear nor the clothes that cover your precious body. I come before these and am beyond these. For I am that which nothing can touch, the flame that cannot be extinguished, the aliveness that is your birthright; though the world we inhabit does everything in its power to snuff it out of existence.

Finding me again is simple but rarely easy. You may glimpse me in a rare moment of stillness. In the newborn's cry, the bird's wing or song, the wave folding in on itself before returning to its source. You may cry out for me in loss that feels too great to bear, in the river cascading from the near vertical mountainside, its spray sparkling like diamonds in the sun; in your despair and your anguished longings. You will touch me in pleasure, and in the rare experience of bliss. But time and again you will take yourself from me⁓from yourself, really, for we are not separate⁓for the dance of waking to who you truly are, to this warmth, this vitality, this fire, is fraught with rule breaking, with haunting themes of safety, even of survival. Though it is also true that once touched you will not be able ever to completely forget, try as you may, and you do. For the truth is also that nothing that is touched by fire is ever the same again. The paths home are as many and as varied as you. It matters not which you take, it matters only that you do, that you find those moments, for you can exist without me but you cannot truly live. You need me, yes. But I also need you. I need you, your loved ones need you, you need you, the world and all that is needs you.

Taking Flight

                          

Sometimes change happens so fast I feel as though I am on an earth suddenly devoid of gravity, a globe that wobbles at her poles where I hang in the rip between worlds like an unhinged door, not quite recognizing or inhabiting myself.

Between the old and the new, past and future, hope and despair, one me and another, the caterpillar not quite yet the butterfly; the newly skinless snake. And Pluto, god of tear-it-all-down transformation crawls into the Ninth House, where the very meaning of life itself sits in wait.

A stone becomes a great white egret. Together we lift off from the clear creek and fly between the canopy of green that line its edges into the great bowl of blue~ free at last. I both watch her and am her; wings beating in tandem; grace in motion. In the primordial ocean I am a drop of water, a wave, the deep dark abyss, the foam like lace etched in the virgin sand. Suddenly a sea cliff appears and on its edge a massive golden eagle. Full circle, yang to the egret's yin. Later, dolphins surface to the heartbeat of the drum, welcome back the prodigal daughter, salt water and bliss massaging the lines on her face, the sagging skin, the wrinkles, sets her silvery hair afloat.

The writer grieves. The lover, the mother, the grandmother grieves. The beloved of nature grieves. The child grieves. The mystic~dare I say it~grieves. The dry creek bed grieves, the tree, the earth, the very soul of the world all grieve. 

It turns out it doesn't have to be something. It doesn't need a beginning and an end, not a middle, or a thesis statement. Here, right here, is a start. Get in and then get out, my watercolor teacher counsels. No fiddling, she says in her musical Australian accent, just simple brush strokes pushing water and pigment and then wash the brush and go make tea. A single crack, words gush like water, now close the computer, turn out the light, and hope for sleep.