Monthly Archives: September 2026

Sep11

walk this way

Posted on by
Standard

“What a mess I have made with nothing but an idea that I am not enough.” – Chloe Frayne

I’m up early in one of my snits again, and don’t see why you shouldn’t have the benefit of my wisdom – insert laughing emoji face here – such as it is. It’s been a busy week. Most of my busy happens inside my skin, but it is happening all the same…although I have also had many external distractions. Wonderful distractions, actually. Those usually show up as friend blessings for me.

But a conversation with a friend a few days ago has been playing in my head, and we all know what ADHD does with those, yes? I believe the word for it is perseverate. Gotta love the English language. I certainly do. And that is what the continuing convo in my pea-pickin’ little brain is on about this morning.

In the middle of a perfectly normal, innocent conversation about the tarot something interesting came up. The tarot be like that. It’s a sparkler to my dynamite. The Devil card came up. It’s one of my favorite cards. It’s always a gift. It’s the card of addiction. And if you think you don’t have any of those, well…you just keep telling yourself that. If you are reading this with human eyes, you are in the cult of addicts. You have been programmed since you were forming in utero. But I digress…

Addictions include our persistent attachment to the way things turn out. “My way or the highway” we used to say. It’s one thing to draw a line in the sand, to have healthy boundaries – as long as you are doing that consciously. Sometimes – just sometimes – we are limiting our perception of possible solutions by our automatic reactions to how things can work. That, and I hate to have to tell you this, is an addiction. A behavior so well practiced that it has formed neuro-pathways in your ever-lovin’ little brain and now your thoughts are not creative – they are conditioned. You are operating on auto-pilot. And the Devil shows up to say, “yoo-hoo! What mess have you gotten yourself into this time?!”

My friend is fairly new to the tarot, and as is often the case, certain cards still cause concern. I like that approach, actually. It’s why I have always loved teaching the tarot. Be a skeptic. Always be a skeptic. That’s a healthy approach to any new learning. As Elizabeth Gilbert wisely says, be just 5% more curious than afraid. Unless it’s a bear.

Okay. So, in aforementioned conversation, we came upon the subject of negative energies, or demons. They scare her. They should. They are nasty buggers, and I don’t care if they are “real” or thought forms or narcissists or an idiot with a semi-automatic or fascists or whatever. Let’s just categorize them as anything that doesn’t feel good. I gots ’em…we all gots ’em. They aren’t going away. This week they are stealing my identity and charging shit I didn’t authorize. And yeah, I’m pissed. On so many levels.

Meanwhile, here is what I told my friend, and apparently need to hear myself: they have all the power you sign over. They have no dominion over you unless you agree to it. Believe when I tell you, I have met them. They are not invisible to me. So, how do we deal with them? WE SPEAK. Directly to their ugly faces. Take a breath. Speak AT them. These words – like you fucking mean it! “GET THEE BEHIND ME SATAN!”

“IF YOU ARE NOT OF THE LIGHT OF CHRIST, BE GONE NOW!” And to yourself: “I command my spirit into my body in full at this time!” (Thank you, Carolyn Myss)

Repeat after me: I COMMAND MY SPIRIT INTO MY BODY IN FULL AT THIS TIME! And while I’m at it, “Hey Archangel Michael – some help here!”

My friend was taken aback. She had never heard me speak like this before. She knows me as a witch. It never would have occurred to her that I was religious. You could say she was shocked. “Do you have to believe in Christ?” she asked me. I told her demons don’t mess with me anymore. Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight, and don’t call a therapist when an exorcist is needed. Bitch, please. I’m from Detroit.

I am sorry I did not answer her that day. There were others in our conversation who went on talking and asking other questions, and I never got back around to answering. So I’m doing so now. I will share this with her, as I am with you. I think it’s important in our current sit-u-a-tion.

The short answer is no. Christ does not care if you “believe” in him or not. It is not a requirement. I am not Catholic. I was not raised to be religious. Quite frankly, I don’t believe in religion. It’s a cult mentality. It scares me, in a creepy clown horror film sort of way. Because – and please, if you don’t hear anything else I ever say, hear this – Christ is not a Christian. Actually, the man known as Jesus the Christ was a middle-eastern black Jew…but, anyway…also hear this: CHRIST IS GOD. Period. What is God? God is consciousness. Therefore! CHRIST IS CONSCIOUSNESS!

And consciousness is life force. And if you don’t think it’s smarter than you, well, good luck to ya. And newsflash – you need do nothing to access this consciousness. You’re breathing it. When we are suffering, we are practicing denial of our nature. If you need any help with denial, I’m your gal. I have mastered that routine.

SO. In conclusion – why do these words work (and they do)?! Because words are how we exercise power. Words. Language. Would those words work in Farsi? In German? In Bantu? In French? I expect they would…but I don’t know those languages. I speak English.

And, so, when I speak those words, I am speaking a ritual that has been practiced for thousands of years. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Or, as I “heard” this morning in meditation, “who told you life had to be decoded?’

Sep7

’til there was you

Posted on by
Standard

“It was love and I lived in it. And it is grief, and I will carry it.” – Chloe Frayne

No secret to anyone I’ve been in a funk lately. A funky funk. Ugly cry at the least mention of a name or the sight of a dog or cat. Not good company. But I am blessed with friends who simply don’t care how surly or snarky or blubbery I am on any given day. Imagine that. I call them spiritually generous, and I have to confess that I am not so magnanimous. I come up against my own myopic self importance daily. It never ceases to shock and appall.

All this amounts to the only logical explanation: I am melting. I’m like the wicked witch of the west and life doused me with a bucket of water. Unlike the witch, I am melting slowly…taking my sweet time. The “I” I thought I knew so well is disintegrating. And as Anne LaMott so wisely quipped: everything I let go of has claw marks.

One of my generous friends had invited me to a lovely event last week and I cancelled at the last minute, after she’d bought tickets. I had a migraine. Those are coming to the surface again lately as I melt. How did she respond? Well, she asked if she could take me out to brunch later in the week. Those kind of friends. Her voice has never once hinted “what an ass.” Not that her year has been a walk in the park either.

So yesterday we met at a restaurant halfway between us. In she walks with a gift bag, bright tissue paper peeping out the top. A box of new watercolors. Encouragement. Hope. She believes in me. She is the embodiment of grace and I can’t help but wonder what I did to deserve her…must have been good to her in a past life…aka parallel timeline.

We hadn’t seen each other since our road trip to Detroit earlier in the summer. The one where I had her as a captive audience in my speeding car for hours and saw fit to lambast her with my latest attack of trauma-induced rage. Talk about stuck in self pity; I’m the gold standard. And yet, in she walks for whatever comes up, glutton for punishment. Mind you, it was a small public place. Much safer bet on her part. And it wasn’t that I was in a much better headspace these months later. Nope. Still stuck. Still depressed. Still waiting on divine intervention to pull me out of the muckety-muck.

She showed up anyway. I had mentioned this meeting to another friend on the phone early that morning, moaning about how broke I am that I shouldn’t be going out anywhere; I shouldn’t even be spending the gas to get there. Only to discover later that she had sent me brunch money via Paypal. She did say, “you need to get out of the house. Go!” A third friend who I had also cancelled on last week asked me: “What does support look like for you right now?” She wouldn’t have liked my first thought. It was very whiney. Why does anyone even like me?!

My God I am blessed to have these extraordinary women in my life.

And something did shift yesterday morning at breakfast. First of all, the 20 minute drive itself was transformative. It had rained all week, humidity contributing to the headaches. But Saturday was a glorious, sunny morning. I was almost pain free. The M22 drive was through dense green hills, along the Lake Michigan shoreline with shy glimpses of towering dunes off in the distance. Alone, quiet…as if it were all being presented for me. Who could be sad?

My friend has been going through a difficult time, too…don’t think I know anyone who isn’t, actually. She just went through applying for government assistance to clean up her flood damage. Last year a violent hail storm destroyed her homes’ siding and roof. We all seem to be melting, physically and metaphorically. And I asked her point blank, “how do you stay so hopeful? Gracious? How do you do it?” We laughed and we cried over our avocado toast. We got some sideway glances from the waitress. Can’t tell me she’s having an easy time of it. Maybe she was hoping she’d overhear a snippet of wisdom from the two grey hairs at table 6. Good luck, darlin’.

But I am here to tell you something I realized just then – right there in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, nobody that I am. I wouldn’t trade any of this for the world…

Tearing up again, I said to my friend: “For some reason I may never come to understand, I feel as if a thousand million possible timelines all converged at the moment of my birth and somehow I chose exactly the right one.”

She and I will often talk about houses. We love houses, architecture, design. Occasionally we accompany each other to view some new fantasy cottage dream we saw on a real estate site. We are constantly perusing all the listings and “fiz-bo’s” – for sale by owners, hoping to discover some great deal everyone else missed. Hey – it happens. I’ve bought them. Maybe you have. But we finally admitted something to ourselves yesterday: we have spent our lives looking for a place to belong.

Because nothing has ever compared to the home and family we each grew up in. As privileged and magical and fantastic and horrible and hearbreaking and inspiring as it was all at the same time. I admit that I don’t know how to reconcile that. Something waits back there, before I was aware enough to decipher it’s code…something necessary to move forward. Something precious. Something that made me me, and made you you. And I got it, right there that very second. Given the opportunity to do it all differently – I wouldn’t.

Sep1

life on the Holodeck

Posted on by
Standard

It’s been a rough couple of weeks. Could August just be over now?! My son has been going through a health crisis. Apparently he is either super-human or near death and nothing in between. He seems to be getting well, although I don’t think he’s out of the woods yet. Meanwhile, I am reminded that I do not do well with sicknes, mine or others’. I am not a good nurse. Patience is a virtue; it is not one of mine.

I’m quite put out by all this detailed minutia with the blood pressure monitoring and the medications and ongoing tests and doctor visits and updates. Being ill is a lot of work. God Bless the caretakers. I’m a big picture kinda gal…give me the spiritual meaning of all this and I’m good. Gggghhhhhhaaaaaaa. Also meanwhile, I am reminded that this crisis all could have gone south and I might have lost him. Like I could have lost him in his early 20’s to Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. This could be a very different week; one where I am not writing. I am unequivocally uninterested in living without my son in the world. Parents survive losing a child; I can’t imagine how. I don’t care what age they are.

As I spent a week bedside in the hospital I happened across a subject of interest to distract me: the study of telepathy. I’ve been telepathic all my life, with no studies – or even understanding of what was going on. I was well into my 30’s before I realized that everyone wasn’t like this. That everyone did not necessarily know the future or travel out of body or struggle with the concept of time as a fixed point. I lived in a different reality. A more fluid reality – when I was relaxed; healthy; present. When I’m not in crisis.

Interestingly, much of my childhood was spent dealing with crisis’. I think that is probably why I’m so impatient now. I had to be an adult from a very young age, and quite frankly, I’m burnt out. Consequently, I watch a lot of television – something I wasn’t interested in until my 60’s. Although I’m terribly picky about what I watch, and believe me, it isn’t on cable. And I watch a lot of YouTube – the new television. And I’m just as picky there. I’m quite the critic. I find myself envying Siskel and Ebert who invented a lucrative genre to match their particular interest. Wish I’d thought of that. But I digress…

One recent morning I found The Telepathy Tapes. That’s been eye-opening. All my life I have struggled with the concept of being “psychic.” I’ve only this week realized that much of what I have loosely categorized as “psychic ability” is actually telepathy. They are not the same thing. And again, the dominoes of understanding all fell over, including having been autistic decades before anyone heard of it. Everything suddenly makes complete sense about my wildly dysfunctional life.

It has only been in the past few years that I have understood my psychic awareness at all. And how I might “tune in” to knowing something about a complete stranger, or be able to converse with deceased loved ones. I can do both, but they are entirely different functions. So is an out of body experience. But they all come under the umbrella of telepathy.

And this past year, filled with grief, has taught me something I am likewise just beginning to understand and wish to share. I’ve always struggled to understand what most people know as time and space. As I said, those are fluid for me. I’ve had to learn how to stay here now. I’ve had to learn to set boundaries with other beings in other places in order to remain in this lifetime; to say “No. I’m going back” and to name the year. In my “dream.”

I remember decades ago having a heated discussion with someone about the concept of reincarnation. I simply don’t get it. I was going through a series of deep-tissue release treatments with a Buddhist monk who flew into the Detroit suburbs from Washington state. He was probably the most “psychic” person I’d ever met. I had unbelievable experiences during these sessions. I would suddenly be standing on a wooden platform with a noose around my neck, or some such extreme circumstance that came out of nowhere. Mr. Collins knew exactly what I was experiencing and guided me through it and back to my painful body. He told me these were “past life memories,” and I think I laughed out loud at him. Pphhhttttt….past life. I told him he lived in California too long. He asked me why I didn’t believe these experiences were real. Oh, I knew they were real – I just couldn’t wrap my mind around reincarnation because I can’t wrap my mind around the idea that there is a past. Or a future. It’s all now. So was that me standing there? Of course it was. But no more me than the cedar tree out back. Or your dog.

My problem isn’t tuning in to other people, places, times. My problem is tuning out. My problem is staying here. Or it used to be when I was young; I learned those boundaries much sooner than I did the boundaries needed in my family relationships. Somehow I knew I had to, or I wasn’t going to be here long.

Now where does this get us? What the heck is all this for anyway? Well…I just got something valuable about this. Grappling with grief and fear this week has given me a tremendous gift. You know how mediums talk about connecting with our loved ones or ancestors “on the other side”? They are not on the other side – we are.

I miss my cat. Terribly. Some nights I swear I feel him jump up on the bed and curl up against me. I smell my father’s cigar. I hear my mother laugh at me. They are not in some other reality – call it heaven or the bardo – or however you want to explain it. No. They are actually in reality. Period. They are living in the reality of fluid space and time. We call it eternity in our naive attempts to rationale their absence and our grief. No, friends. Where they exist IS reality. You and I are playing on the Holodeck. They’re waiting patiently.