warrior {self portrait challenge}

I am a woman on a journey of healing. And as I heal, I grieve, laugh, sing, dance, cry, giggle, roar, open my heart, let go, dance again, chant, paint, howl, sob, yell, sit in the quiet, write, bend, stretch, move, let go again, write some more, and allow myself to crack open.

I am finding the warrior within. There is only one real battle: to be the warrior who can live in her life. Live. In. Her. Life. I stand tall with my heart open, my head high, my feet planted firmly beneath me. I feel the strength in my body, in my heart, in my mind, in my soul. I take a breath. I feel the energy within me as it radiates from my fingertips to the ones who passed before me and walk beside me, from my eyes to the future in front of me, from my shoulder blades to the world that is around me, down my legs and through my feet into the earth below me, and from my heart to you.

You are finding the warrior within. I am not alone on my journey; you are there with me. You are learning how to stretch and stand tall with your feet beneath you. You are feeling the power of the front of your body open to the world around you. You are allowing your heart to crack open with each breath. Each inhale cracks your heart open a little more. Again. Again.

We are side by side on this journey. We are learning how to heal, how to find the joy, how to rock gently in the pain, how to throw our heads back with laughter, how to let go. We are standing tall as warriors. And I believe that we are in the midst of a movement. A movement that is going to change us all as we change the world.

I am a woman on a journey. And I am not alone.

(For Denise who gave me a little homework assignment that inspired this. Thank you my friend.)

See others who are taking the self portrait challenge here.

i do and i do not

Last week (or was it the week before?) Thea tagged me with the do/don't meme...I am finally sitting down to write a response:

I do love dairy products more than any other food group.
I do not love the way my body sometimes responds to dairy products and the way my thigh holds onto ice cream and cheese to remind me, forever, of this fact.

I do wish I could swim with humpback whales and sea otters.
I do not love deep water or putting my head underwater...in fact, they both terrify me.

I do think that there is a power, an energy, that is greater than me.
I do not go to church and currently have no desire to attend any kind of organized Sunday morning service other than my teacher's yoga class.

I do love being the passenger on a nice long car ride to a favorite spot.
I do not sit quietly (unless I am asleep) and often try to tell my dear husband how he should be driving (this happens during the interludes when I am not in concert).

I do stand in front of people every week and invite them to love their bodies and take care of themselves.
I do not love my body all the time and I often forget to take care of myself (but when I am teaching yoga I forget how much I do not love my body and just live in my own skin).

I do believe that expressing gratitude is one of the most important things you can share with a person.
I do not tell people thank you enough (this changes today).

I do know that my heart already has all the answers I need.
I do not listen to my heart enough, though I am trying to sit in the quiet more each day.

I do think about writing a book (and I have started talking about it).
I do not spend time actually writing it. This needs to change.

I do the way our garden looks in the summer and I love eating the tomatoes and fresh herbs we grow ourselves.
I do not like weeding or general garden upkeep and wish little gnomes would come in the night and do it for me.

I do love the song "Galileo" by the Indigo Girls because it reminds me that I am not the only person who wonders "how long 'til my soul gets it right?"
I do not love that I cannot answer this question (but appreciate that Blue Poppy had similar thoughts about this last week).

Please share any do/do nots that come to mind...I would love to hear them...

wishing {sunday scribblings}

I remember my mom telling me a story about her teenage years when all she wanted was to be 21. She thought everything would change for the better on her birthday. She would tell her grandmother this, and Grandma Eide would say, "don't wish your life away." My mother would tell me this story several times when I was younger. To be honest, I don't remember the context. If it was a "lesson" moment or rather a time when she simply wanted to talk about her grandmother, a woman she loved deeply. The next part of the story involved the sadness my mother felt when her grandmother died before my mom turned 21. Maybe it was a lesson in irony. I don't know.

When I was about 11 or so, I wrote a poem that was really a song in my head about this story... the lines I remember:

I was sitting next to grandma braiding her long hair
and I asked her 'bout the good old days when she was twenty-one.
She laughed and smiled and asked me why I wanted to know.
I told her that I could not wait until I was twenty-one.
She looked at me and said,
"don't wish you life away dear, don't wish your life away."

I had not thought about this story or these "lyrics" in a long time. And somehow those words are in my head because I can hear the melody that accompanied them.

I am struck by the images of wishing that appear in fairy tales...the young girl wishes for her handsome prince...and all the drama that happens before her wish can come true. I always related to this story. I wanted my prince. I wanted to be old enough for my prince to come and rescue me and take me to far off lands where I could eat cake and wear pretty dresses and dance at the ball. I imagine my mother was having similar thoughts when she was wishing to be twenty-one. As though all would change when she became an adult at that magical age.

It is easy for me to get caught up in the magical world of wishes and fairies and castles and talking animals and creatures you thought existed only in your dreams. But then there are those moments that jerk me back into reality. When my serious nature kicks in and plants me firmly in one spot. Maybe today I can give myself permission to travel to those far off lands and share three wishes...

I wish you could see my wings, the ones I feel along my shoulder blades, the ones that whisper to me and move me forward; they are deep, indigo blue with shades of purple, and they are soft and full of strength and fearlessness. If you come a bit closer, they can envelope you and for a moment you will be home.

I wish I had a companion in the form of a golden furry, friendly beast who would remind me that everyday I can find the courage to share all that is spilling open in my soul (and maybe it could also warn me when the scaries are coming or help me look out for other bumps in the night).

I wish I had a magical power that would let me: step into books and wrap myself up in a quilt and sit at the feet of kate chopin as she wrote The Awakening, or live, just for a moment, inside a painting of a little girl wearing a backpack, holding a fishing line and ask her where she is going, or lie down inside the words of William Stafford until our hearts beat with the same rhythm.

If a fairy princess appeared with a magic wand today, I would ask her for these three things...

(to read how other people might wish or think about wishes head over to sunday scribblings)

gratitude this evening.

today i am grateful:

that i have almost gotten my home office/studio organized. almost.

for my husband who takes care of me and millie.

for an early birthday present that will be coming next week from jon's parents (a sewing machine!!! now...which one of you crafty ladies is coming to visit to give me lessons?)

for all of the new poems i read yesterday. i love poetry thursday. and yesterday i discovered some that just made me sigh out loud (and feel my wings).

for the way blogging has brought some incredible people into my life.

that many of the shows i watch have had season finales so i will maybe start reading more and watching less television (three hours of grey's anatomy this week...it was good...but that is a lot of tv).

that virginia woolf and sylvia plath walked into my life this week and don't seem to want to walk out. stubborn women.

for the flowers i bought at the tacoma farmer's market yesterday. they smell so good! though i think they are making my nose run a bit.

for a package of doo-dads from sacred kitsch studio. so. much. fun.

for some ideas that are percolating in my head after reading this book by Lynne Perrella. (stay tuned.)

that i discovered a wonderful store yesterday that sells crafts and other "stuff" made by senior citizens. this is how these seniors make money...they also sell other random things like a big bag of buttons for 50 cents and a bag of rick rack for 25 cents (the great old school, soft, cloth rick rack).

that this weekend will bring time with friends. i. have. friends. here. finally.

for moments of contentment and wonder and silliness and strength and laughter and calm and awareness and balance.

and i am also very proud of my husband who got a summer job teaching physics at a community college (during the school year he teaches high school physics). he has also started a blog, but he isn't ready for me to share it with you yet. hmmm...hopefully soon.

hope you are finding moments of gratitude in your life today as well.

lost in the poetry section {poetry thursday}

On Wednesday afternoon, I got lost in the poetry section at Borders (not my first choice for poetry, I must admit, but I had a $5 gift card. Of course, I was so distracted by the fun I had that I didn't remember to use it).

I pulled a few books off the shelf and settled into a comfy leather chair with my iced mocha (with whipped cream!) and began to read the pages of the poems of Sharon Olds, Sylvia Plath, Jack Kerouac, and Naomi Shihab Nye.

I discovered something that people who have visited poetryland for years now already know. There is a rhyme and reason to the order of poems in a book of poetry. I suppose on some level I understood this. However, I didn't really "get" this until I started reading this book of Sylvia Plath's poetry. This is the collection of her poems that was published by her husband, Ted Hughes, after her death. When he published them, he, as her daughter explains in the foreword of the book, "left out some of the more lacerating poems." It seems he did this in an attempt not to alienate the reader or hurt her friends and family. Some of you may be familiar with this story. I was not. Freida Hughes (Plath's daughter) explains some history here that may be eye opening for some. Again, I am new to Plath's poetry and this story, so I will not even try to speak to all of this here. I am simply intrigued by it all. (And on a sidenote, I didn't realize until I came home from the bookstore to read my email that netflix has sent the movie Sylvia to be delivered tomorrow. Another layer of the story will be given to me I suppose. Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath...walking across my life this week. I guess since they sit beside each other on my bookshelf they must have decided to cook something up and get me to start really reading them.)

This edition includes all of the poems Plath intended for this volume of poetry. It even includes facsimiles of her typed pages in the arrangement she had planned. There are other interesting surprises in the book as well. For example, the hand-written, then typed, drafts of the poem "Ariel." A tiny glimpse into the thought process of this woman. I loved this. Knowing Sylvia Plath had many drafts of one poem. I sat there and took a breath, reminded once again that I am not alone.

As I began to understand that, to the poet, the order of poems is significant, I turned to this book and started to read from the first page. I read the first few...then skipped to the middle and read a few in order there. Ahhh...how interesting.

Of course, these two books came home with me, so that I can continue to read and contemplate and curl up in the words of these two insightful, questioning, courageous, brilliant women. And I suspect that sometimes, I will have to shut the book and sit, with eyes closed, and try to take it in...because these two poets will invite me to look at aspects of my life that may not be as comfortable and question if I am really living or just watching my life.

Click here to read "Morning Song" by Sylvia Plath (from her collection of poems in Ariel).

Click here to read "Streets" by Naomi Shihab Nye (from her collection of poems in Words Under the Words: Selected Poems).

Happy reading...maybe you will feel invited to head to the poetry section and get a little lost yourself.

brave {self portrait challenge}

some brave dreams...

to swim with the humpback whales
to write a book and send it off in a package to a publisher who will say yes
to have a child
to spend a month in paris
to live in italy
to move to maui to be closer to the whales
to sing and dance on broadway
to get a tatoo
to be a back-up singer for james taylor
to write more poetry and then one day to read it to others
to forgive a bit more
to help others know they are not alone
to own my own sexiness
to remember that i am only in charge of myself
to own the joy i feel as i put paint, glue, color, crayon, ink, tape, and other stuff to a blank canvas
to rescue another dog
to go back to school and get a masters degree
to let go of more guilt
to read more books
to take a road trip by myself
to own that i cannot save everyone and do all that is asked of me
to remind myself of who i am in those moments when i forget
to worry less about money
to listen to my heart more and follow what it tells me
to climb a tree
to manifest more peace
to learn to speak a foreign language fluently
to have more faith in myself
to love, for the rest of my life, the man i was looking at as i took this picture

{this was a prompt from Sabrina Ward Harrison's book The Truth and the Questions Journal.}

we all have a story...

Tonight as I watched the movie The Hours I was reminded of this idea: every monster has a story.

All the people we meet in our lives have a story. The people who love us, entertain us, hold us, these people, it can be easier to recognize that they have a story. Partly because you may know pieces of it. But then there are the people who devastate us, leave us, hurt us, and behave in ways that are unimaginable, these people all have a story too. With all the people we meet along our journey, we can never really know the full extent of their story. We never really know why people behave the way they do.

We can be quick to judge and assume, but we really never know. We fill in the blanks but we don't know the real story behind a person. The baggage people carry and pull behind them and need a cart with wheels for because it is too heavy to drag.

I balance all of this with the idea that this baggage, this reality, does not give a person permission to contribute to the not-so-good-parts of another person's story. But when we glimpse a page of their story, we are given a context. An understanding. Yet, it does not erase their chosen action. But it might...it just might...give us a little space...a tiny, little space to begin to heal.

Tonight, as I watched The Hours, I was reminded of a book called There Is a Monster at the End of This Book. And the monster? Well, its just fuzzy, blue Grover.

Every monster has a story.

i would write {sunday scribblings}

The books I would write...

I would write a book about a little girl who packs up a backpack with Anne of Green Gables, a peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich, her favorite stuffed dog, a thermos of apple juice, crayons, and a notebook. She sets off into the woods behind her house, knowing a grand adventure awaits.

I would write a book about a young woman who finds herself living in Paris at 20. Alone. Scared. Riding her bicycle to the little bookshop where she works, her long brown braids blowing in the wind behind her. In chapter 2, she, of course, meets an older man who will eventually break her heart and lead her to the realization that she can only be happy if she first looks in the mirror at her own reflection, alone. In the last chapter, she will meet him. The one. The first person to take care of her and give her space. At the same time.

I would write a book about a mermaid who swims with the whales in the warm blue water off the coast of Maui. And each summer, when her friends leave her for the cooler waters of Alaska, she weeps. Her tears become the sea glass that washes up on shores around the world. And when human women pick up this glass, they feel a deep connection to its opaque color and smooth texture and an undercurrent of understanding that they are not alone of their journey.

But the book I would write,
the one that is living inside my soul right now,
the one that grows and takes a breath with each beat of my heart,
the one I would write would begin something like this:

The room was quiet except for the clip clop of the pink flip flops I wore on my feet. My mother had questioned me when I walked out to the car, "Are those the only shoes your brought with you?" "I don't think she'll notice," I had replied. She was on the far side of the room, and as I saw her there, I remember having the thought, "this is what love feels like." I suddenly had clarity and love was no longer an indescribable feeling. In that moment, walking up to her, I knew that this is what it is to love someone and know that person has a piece of your heart. And as stood there and looked at her I also knew that this is what is feels like to have your heart broken. The blinders were ripped off, quickly like a blast of cold, air rolling across Lake Michigan in winter. My heart cracked open. My soul would be forever changed.

(visit Sunday Scribblings to read more responses to this prompt)