Category Archives: intuition

Sep11

walk this way

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“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?’

Sep1

life on the Holodeck

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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.

Aug16

the language of the heart

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Shortly after moving from the suburbs of Detroit to Traverse City back in the 1980’s, I became friends with a man named Prof Mondol. Prof wrote a novel titled Operation Tibet. It’s based on his service as a fighter pilot in WWII, having served with the Royal Indian Air Force. Published in 1979, I still have the copy he signed and gifted me. He was such a wise man. I regarded him as an unofficial spiritual teacher of sorts and held him in the utmost respect.

Due to fly somewhere on business, I offered to drive him to Detroit Metro Airport one weekend. It was an opportunity to talk for hours, and I could also take my young son to visit his father in Midland along the way. That trip would prove quite enlightening on several levels, although not in any way I could have expected.

After introducing Prof while dropping my son off, my former husband asked if he could speak to me privately for a minute. We walked down his long driveway off M20 just west of Midland. He was very direct with this statement that if I ever dared to expose his son to a black person again (Prof was a native of India), he would see to it that I never saw my son again. Specifically he explained in detail how he would have drugs planted in my car and ensure that I spent my life in prison. “Are we clear on this? Do you understand me?!” he bellowed in a whisper. Ha! As if I could be anything but clear about who I had divorced years prior. While also perfectly clear about being responsible for who I had married…and why he felt so familiar. Ass-holes are familiar to me.

I did not know that day that Prof was dying of cancer, and that trip would be the last time I would spend with him. I did not know what a gift it was. I still remember our conversation, and I have just thought of it again. Triggered recently, of course, by a family member reminding me how different we are; how I have always been, and will always be, an outsider in my family of origin. Because Prof asked me a question that day that would subconsciously affect my entire adult life: “do you believe that God created the universe – or is creating the universe?”

“Creating,” I replied without hesitation. It was an intuitive response. Immediate. From the depths of my being.

For reasons I may never comprehend, road trips seem to provide some precious insights for me. Don’t know what it is about setting a block of time aside and getting away from the house; maybe it’s the open highway…maybe it’s just making myself available to drive for people I love. My natural tendency is to stay home. I really don’t like to leave the house, and often don’t for long periods of time. To say home is sanctuary for me is a gross understatement. Home is renewal; home is life.

Sitting still does not even remotely mean I am not experiencing constant change. I guess I am living an internal life. Nature visits me at my door. The world quite literally revolves around me; I remain still at the center. You might be surprised to know that no two days are ever the same from my chair here in the corner.

But returning home recently I found myself on a detour. Road construction in Michigan happens in summer, when the weather allows. I would be passing so near to my family cemetery that it seemed disrespectful not to stop. And so I did, for the first time in years. It made me feel acutely sad. The grave sites of my parents and brother, among those of multiple generations of ancestors, were overgrown. Rocks were strewn willy-nilly. My parents graves had a headstone; my brothers did not. Later that week I was talking to my sister and mentioned this. She is the only member of my family I have much contact with at all, and then it is infrequent. We live 10 hours drive apart.

A couple of days later she asked if I would be willing to place grave markers if she were to purchase them. I agreed. She researched online and asked if she could ship them directly to me. I agreed. Within another day or so I was informed that the two grave markers had been ordered and were being shipped to her. And that she had enlisted her son, my nephew, to drive up with the markers and meet with the township for placement. He would be overseeing the project and I would be notified when it was done.

It isn’t that I mind being dismissed. Certainly not in this instance. It did startle me for a moment. And reminded me that it has always been this way in my family. I might be temporarily enlisted to participate. But then they will think better of it. As in, better not trust this to Susan. Better not let Susan make a decision. Better to handle it without Susan and then inform her. It’s been this way as long as I can remember. I am a member of the family…but just barely. They scoot over at the last minute and give me a seat on the bench. I’m an adjunct member. By default. By default that we had the same two parents, that is. But I am certainly not an equal.

And in this specific instance, the truth is that I don’t much understand or value the physical need to visit the remains of dead loved ones. They aren’t there. Although it has been documented that all wild animals in nature pause when passing over ground with remains below. It is known that elephants will spend some time stopping on their migrations pausing over long buried remains far under the ground. And they will spend almost twice as long IF those remains are of their own herd.

Which brings me full circle to what this essay is about (finally, eh?) How do the elephants know? What is the built in telepathic sense that all life on earth seems to possess? Why don’t humans understand, acknowledge and value it? What is this telepathy inherent in nature?

For lack of a better word, some would call it psychic. We are psychic beings. Acknowledged or not, we are all living a psychic life. Everything is psychic. God is psychic. You learned “all-knowing.” Same thing: interconnected.

So how am I depressed? Why am I so debilitated by grief? What is death? How can I reconcile the injustice of the world I live in? What is this perceived divide in reality?

We humans seem to have made such a clusterfuck of this ark we were entrusted with. We don’t even know we were placed here. We are in a panic that we will miss our purpose. We’ve been allocated to adjunct caretakers. Our seat on the bench is dwindling. Our time for being trusted has come and gone, and we don’t even know what is happening here.

But I do understand it. My cells get it. My psychic field, my spirit, knows. We are all part of the same God. We are infinitely intelligent. God isn’t done. The universe wasn’t created. It is becoming. We are becoming.

Jul11

Only you.

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7/11, 6:36 am. Life gets very real after 70. You can fool yourself and others throughout your sixties that you are still “middle-aged,” especially if you are blessed with looking a bit younger. I see people doing this all the time these days on social media. But you can’t get away with thinking you are middle-aged in your seventies. And tbh, there isn’t a descriptive word for old that I like. The word elderly makes me cringe. I don’t think I’ll ever be – or identify – as elderly…we’ll see. Maybe in my 80’s. Maybe I’ll revisit that word then. But I don’t feel old. We need a new word for people who are over 70 and fabulous.

I don’t know about you, but I am living my best life. I’m just getting around to it. It’s been a long haul, but from here on out I intend to rock this as long as it lasts. Starting now. As I said, it’s been a long haul – which is to say, those tired old demons of self-doubt have not yet given up the ghost. They’re still chasing. One of the most beautiful advantages of age is perspective and insight: those doubts become more transparent than ever. Seeing FEAR for what it is: False Evidence Appearing Real, becomes habit. FU fear. Or as my Mother would have said, move along smartly. Ain’t nobody got time for you here.

I just quit my job. I guess you could say I re-retired. It wasn’t an actual job; it was some work I had taken on out of fear. Fear of being poor to be exact. But it wasn’t working on several levels. So I gave myself permission to leave without feeling guilty, like I had let someone down or somehow failed. Maybe I’d feel differently if I were making some big cash, but that was not the case. So it was keeping me from doing my real work – which is right here on the page, with you. Because this is where the healing happens, and I want healing more than ever.

The real work is being. As in myself. All this psychobabble about authenticity is getting on my nerves. Who has time for nerves after 70? Not me. I must say however, we have such expanded language for this phase of life. Expansion I only wish my mother and my grandmothers could have known. And so I will honor them by not squandering this time and this awareness.

My dreams have been screaming at me. Wake up! Stop lollygagging. Write. Draw. Paint. Tell stories. Give yourself permission. Give yourself permission. I’m going to be saying that repeatedly for awhile. And reminding myself and you: there are no coincidences. There is no lapse in time. There is only now. There is only me and only you.

Apr22

all will be revealed

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“I am a traveler of time and space, to be where I have been.” – Led Zeppelin, Kashmir.

In this morning’s waking dream, I was Mae. I was Irish, but living in France. The entire dream was in French and I understood every word. Susan knows not a bit of French, just fyi. I knew my full name was actually Maeve. I was older, perhaps middle aged. Although I never saw myself in present time, because I never walked past a mirror in the dream. However, my friend and former colleague was showing me a short video she had recorded years prior. We were watching snippets of video she had recorded during a work picnic. I was maybe 20 years younger. Petite. Short red hair, and a gorgeous smile. Fresh out of college. I had only started working at the design firm a few weeks before. I felt awkward and insecure, not yet sure of myself. Not yet sure that I belonged here or would be accepted.

The dream went on for quite some time as we reminisced and delighted in our youth and naivete. I’ll spare you all the details but to say that it was a happy experience and I woke refreshed. Where do these things come from?! They always surprise me. I say they because this is not unusual for me. This has always been my very interesting dream life. The only difficulty with my diverse nighttime experiences are translating them into some sort of application to my mundane, every day life when I am awake!

Remember the television show called Quantum Leap? I remember watching and thinking, “oh, well, big deal – I’ve always done that.” I would be well into my 30’s before I realized that it was not everyone’s normal.

So, I have quite literally experienced being every race, age, gender, and I have not always been in human form. I have been to the past and the future. I have been innocent; I have been guilty. I have rescued a baby from a well in Africa. Pulled people out of a plane crash in Washington, D.C. and a derailed train in Ohio, both accidents verified the following morning. I’ve been hung for treason in medieval Europe; felt the wooden trap door fall away from under my feet and woke up. I’ve written music and worked on special effects for Warner Brothers movies. Just not as Susan.

I woke from one such out-of-body experience having been in an earthquake where the people around me looked Asian. I was feeling shocked when I walked out of the bedroom into the living room that morning – and told my husband and our house guest that I had just been in an earthquake and we had better turn on the television to see what was going on. There had just been a major earthquake in Kobe, Japan. I then had to explain to our guest that this is my usual nighttime routine, through no fault or plan of my own. He was a bit flabbergasted until decades of such stories later, shared in confidence.

Now, I must tell you two things: I have absolutely no clue what this means. I have never understood it or known what to do with the experiences or information. I don’t know why it happens. And secondly, I do not believe for a moment that this phenomenon makes me special or unique. Or insane. It just is. I will say that I am always very grateful to wake from these “dreams” in my own little bed, as me. So far, so good.

Until now, here, I have seldom shared any of this with anyone other than my closest friends. And hopefully they don’t think I’m nuts. Or maybe they don’t care. I’ve only shared it when it has happened, and understandably, it freaks some people out. Like my houseguest who I did not know well, but who watched the experience unfold before him.

So…conclusions? Time travel is real, that much I know. No machine or external device needed. I have also concluded from 7 decades of these surreal experiences that we are all connected. I do not believe in past lives. I would describe it this way: there is no time or space, actually. Just molecules in constant motion. It all exists at once in the mind of God. To me, God is consciousness, and could not be anything else. Absolutely unknowable to any one individual.

I have worked hard all of my dream life, since I can remember. This morning, having just met Mae, I had an odd thought about all of this: what if we work here, on earth, and when our body dies we get to retire? Maybe that’s what heaven is. Maybe it’s retirement. I have visited loved ones in heaven. I have been visited here by angels; I have no doubt of their existence in both spirit and physical form, as needed to complete the task at hand.

When I was little my Mom used to say, “I’m just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” She was referring to housework. She was a lonely housewife with five children – six if you include my father, who, btw, never did grow up. She had her hands full, but she never complained. Somehow she managed eloquently (although she did drink!) One of her most endearing attributes is that she never lost her sense of humor. I would be much older when I would respond to her by saying “yes, and it matters how the chairs are placed.” Because it does. Everything matters. I just don’t know why. Yet.

My darling brother Ward claimed to be an atheist, to which I would reply, “Well then, you just haven’t heard enough rock and roll music.” He’s retired now, walking those streets of gold…

Apr16

“Seal the blast doors!”

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When my son was little I used to say, “you can fool some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time…but you can’t fool me.” It was straight-up manipulative programming. I’m not proud. Not only was I living in survival mode myself, but I had noooooo clue how to parent a child, let alone a sensitive genius. I set out to convince him that he had best not try to pull the wool over my eyes. I would not be fooled. Maybe not the best way to build trust.

In truth I had pulled just about every trick in the book with my own parents. I’m not sure they were actually fooled, but they allowed me to get away with anything and everything. They subconsciously taught me to think that I was really smart…hahhahaa. I was certainly creative getting myself into all manner of sticky situations. God, my guardian angels, always had my back. Like the night of my 18th birthday when I drove to the tattoo parlor to get a tattoo – and the building was literally on fire! As it happened, I got my first tattoo for my 40th birthday, and I’m glad I waited for a number of reasons. Never mind in the year 1972 that industry wasn’t regulated, so…eewww.

Fast forward decades and I am no more savvy than I was at 18…or, am I? No smarter, perhaps, except to know what I don’t know. But oh…way, way more trusting. Exponentially more faith. Faith in my intuition, imagination, God. Those are all the same things, just by the by…and somewhere after midnight, in my wildest fantasies…

The original Star Wars came out in 1977, the year before my son was born. There were no streaming services then. I insisted my husband take me to the theater, and I remember that it was only showing at one theater in the northern Detroit suburbs, in Southfield. The next day I made him take me back with my teenage sister in tow this time. My heart knew something truthful was happening and I was going to glean every drop of inspiration I could while it was available. It was life-changing, like watching The Beatles on Ed Sullivan as a kid. A bold new world of possibilities was opening up.

When my son was old enough – 7 or 8, maybe – we watched Star Wars together. And I told him something I believed to be true then, and still now: “you must become a Jedi to survive in the world of your future.” He is, indeed, a Jedi for his time. I encouraged his intuition despite not understanding how it worked.

Recently I lost one of my heroes, my former husband. I say that with a whole clusterfuck of mixed emotions. He needed to be my hero to feel worthy as a man – and thus, he needed me to remain in the role of damsel-in-distress. It took years for me to become cognizant of that unhealthy dynamic; more years to extricate myself once I had tried and failed to change it. But I never did overcome the need for him in my corner when I was truly in trouble. And he never abandoned me. He might not have had any emotional intelligence (he was an addict, after all), but he was always at the end of the phone in an actual emergency. That was his love language. For example, when my son was diagnosed with lymphoma, he showed up at the door unannounced, dropping off bags of groceries. He did his best with what he knew, also a product of his own dysfunctional upbringing. I’m learning to forgive him. And me.

And so here I am, grieving again and still. I’ve had another hero step in since his death, a dear friend. She’s the rare kind of friend who doesn’t wait to be asked if you need help. She knew what I needed and she just showed up. And it wasn’t the first time she’s done that. Somehow she has always believed in me. There are no words to describe my gratitude.

We all need heroes from time to time. All of a sudden they are everywhere I look. Fear shall not prevail. One of them is my aforementioned friend. Four of them just circled the moon in Artemis II. My son is my hero, just not in a way I expected. He never fails to inspire me, nor to make me laugh and feel safe and loved. He tells me emphatically that I am magic when I least believe it.

One of the women friends I admire most just bought us tickets to see the story of Mary Oliver at the City Opera House next month, a wonderful evening to look forward to. Mary Oliver is one of my heroes, as is Anne LaMott, who wrote:

“I was reminded of the Four Immutable Laws of Spirit: Whoever is present are the right people. Whenever it begins is the right time. Whatever happened is the only thing that could have happened. When it’s over, it’s over.”

Help shows up in many ways. Having faith is recognizing that you are, and always have been, blessed and highly favored. God, the angels, show up in many forms. Sometimes they are the loved ones who have always got your back. Sometimes they frustrate the ever-loving bejesus out of you. This dawn it was simply birds singing me awake. So I mean this, and I say it to you with all my heart: May the force be with you.

Apr2

back for season six

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Since the internist saved my life in the ER five years ago, I have been a patient. The man is brilliant. So, it stands to reason that he has the smartest nurse practitioner in the region. I love this woman. They are the best medical team I’ve ever had, and I have been blessed with some brilliant doctors. All who think outside the box, drawing upon a wide knowledge of medicine and natural treatments. Like the Sufi M.D. I had in Detroit when my son was a toddler. I complained about how hard it was to get him settled at night. He suggested I massage Steven’s little feet with sandalwood oil to help ground him. It was life-changing.

I’ve told the story here of how I was limping around with sciatica when I bumped into the chiropractor who had an office near my workplace. He offered to help me the next morning before we both began our work day. I’d never been to a chiropractor and was hesitant, but I was in pain. He sat me on the table that morning and asked me about the nightmare I had just woken from. “How did you know I had a nightmare?!” He just looked at me. In the nightmare the zoo was on fire, and I was being chased by a polar bear that had escaped. The doctor guided me through a meditation where I allowed the bear to catch up, turned to face it, and it wrapped me in it’s arms and nuzzled me. We cried together. No adjustment, but I never had sciatica again.

As it happened, sitting in the chiropractor’s waiting room that morning, I picked up a magazine off the table. The Sun. I’d never heard of it. It’s a literary magazine, and the cover story was an interview with the author of a new book. The author was Helen Palmer. The book was The Enneagram. I liked and subscribed, decades before social media existed. I bought the book, the magazine, the philosophy and the new perspective.

You’ve heard my stories before. I have thousands of these stories, in case you didn’t think I was living a charmed life. This doesn’t mean I haven’t lived in doubt. Of myself, my intuition, my nature. I’ve even come to appreciate my self doubt. No doubt, no growth. I’m a walking testament to the value of curiosity as a life path.

White haired now at 72, I say that I have discovered that I am a witch. I didn’t set out to be one; still don’t know much about them. They did fly in my window and heal me years ago when I was deathly ill passing gallstones. That was the first I had ever thought of them as anything other than fictional creatures. Was I hallucinating in my fever? You bet. Did that make them less real? Nope. Recognized one downtown several days later, eating lunch in a local restaurant. Real as you and I.

That day was my first outing since being so ill. I was picking up a book I had ordered. I had bought a deck of tarot cards the previous week while visiting Marion down in Grand Rapids, and I wanted the companion book. When I walked into my local Traverse City bookstore late, it happened a strange book sat on the counter. It was waiting for someone who had ordered it but changed their mind. The Flying Witches of Veracruz. I bought it. The Mexican witches had healed the tourist…you guessed it – he was passing gallstones.

That was my life. It hasn’t been obviously magical like that for decades now. Since I married a narcissist and forgot myself. I often joke that I am Rita Van Winkle, Rip’s great-granddaughter – and in my family we fall asleep for 20 years. That’s about how long it took for me to begin to extricate myself from that spell. And the witches showed up for me. They always will.

Mar31

Monday moanin’

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Unlike most, I love Mondays. I always have. Mondays are the beginning of a new week, and I like beginnings. I’ve always been a morning person. Mornings are the beginning of a new day, and I like beginnings. So Monday mornings? The best. This seems to have been true since I was a young girl, old enough to notice that I liked some things better than others, so I’m calling it “my nature.” I am a morning person by nature. I have always preferred sunrises to sunsets, eastern light best of all in a house. It feels like renewal, somehow regenerative.

Only in retrospect am I realizing that I also liked Monday mornings throughout my life because I preferred school to home with family, and work to home with husband. Monday morning provided someplace to go, away from the chaos. It’s sad to see that in retrospect, to not have been aware enough to have seen it at the time I was living it. Big-ass learning curve I’m on this incarnation…phew!

As it happens, this morning I feel at peace. I have not felt at peace in a very long time. My dear long-suffering friends have put up with some very bad behavior coming from me. I’m tiresome. Unreliable. All I have done is cry, swear, and moan. I have even discovered that when you get a solicitation text on your phone – the kind you respond STOP to unsubscribe from – you will also be unsubscribed if you respond FUCK OFF. It works the same but is so much more satisfying. I’m just ornery.

My depression – no, despondency – has been limitless. Since October, so, all fucking winter. This winter has been particularly severe. Dark, extremely cold, historic amounts of snow, power outages. I don’t remember a winter this ugly in decades. It matched my state of mind perfectly. Cart meet horse…never mind…the sun is out this morning. The temperature will soar over 40 degrees today…woohoo. The snow is melting. I can get out of the house. There is hope.

The truth is, of course, this state has been grief. It seems to be bottomless. I’m sure everyone is tired of hearing about it. Losing my beloved familiar broke something open in me. Something that had been festering for a long, long time. Perhaps more than one lifetime. That’s how it feels. I am inconsolably angry – for both of us, you might be glad to know. If I can survive this I’d like to think it will benefit more than just me. But who knows…the longer I live, the less I seem to understand about how things work. I’m new here.

So, now what? From moments of screaming in the shower to resigned meditation, I have repeatedly heard, “wait until spring,” “don’t make any decisions until spring,” “rest until spring.” I yelled and sniped and cajoled back, “be more specific,” “give me a date.” I am so entirely done trying to interpret spirit’s wisdom, or my intuition. Give it to me straight or shut up. And I did – I did – hear back: end of March. March 30th to be precise. And here we are.

Now it is time to discover the entirety of my nature. To learn the language of my soul. To find out how life works if I don’t make compromises. To face east and let the sunrise light me up, now that I am free to be myself.

Dec22

the path of least resistance

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In my last writing, 17 days ago now, I said to myself “take the path of least resistance, Susan.” Suffice it to say that I am terrible at taking my own advice. In fact, I often feel as if I have done nothing but repeat myself here on this blog for over 13 years…I seem to be a very hard learner. This is not new. Dammit. It seems I have been this way all my life.

In the spirit of becoming, as I am trying to convince myself that I can actually live as a verb, ever embracing new habits in the effort to change, improve, evolve….I will once again return my daily routine to the basic practices of self care. I will get out of the shower and put a cotton ball soaked with castor oil in my belly button. I will slather my dry skin with Frankincense. I will write my morning pages, even if it takes me until 3 in the afternoon. Walk. It is cold and icy outdoors. True confessions: I bought myself a walking pad so I can walk indoors. I bought it on sale after Christmas last year. It has never been plugged in. The power cord is around here somewhere…have I ever mentioned that I talk a good game?

There will be no “New Year New You” resolutions declared here for my part. That would be hilarious! If I just stuck to what I know I’d be ahead of the game. When I would challenge my father in my teenage years to walk his talk, he would reply, “do as I say, not as I do…” I wish I didn’t understand that quite so well now as a Mother. I don’t want my child to follow in my footsteps; I hope he surpassed me years ago in every way. Run. Fly.

So. Back to basics. Self care – mentally and physically – is the order of the day. While I’m being honest let me also admit that I am still seriously depressed. I’ve been off antidepressants since my pancreatitis this past summer. I’m trying to stay off of all medications and cleanse my liver and pancreas. Losing Chewy in October has sent me into a tailspin. Grief and the inordinately dark days are kicking my butt. But the real honest-to-goodness truth is that I’m angry. I’m livid. And to explain this would take too long. Where would I start? JesusMaryJoseph, where would I start? I can legit justify my anger into the next millennium, and where does that get me? You got it – sick. It is making me sick.

In my old age I am acknowledging that I have always had an inner knowing that serves me well; that knows the way for me. You have this, too. And that inner knowing has never listened when told, “you need to grow a thicker skin.” No. I have become much too hardened already. I don’t like the world I live in. But I love the earth and the water and the trees, the sentient life; I only want to soften into it as I grow older.

Since I have been grieving I have had a strange companion out in my yard. A lone deer. It’s always by itself and it hangs around close to the house. It sleeps under the Hawthorne right outside my bedroom window. It is different than all the other deer that wander through the yard in large herds. It’s face is darker and it is of stockier build. So maybe the herd rejected it? Maybe it’s somehow disabled? I have no idea. I do put out carrots and veggies, especially now that I can assume the bear is hibernating. Most of the birds have gone with the harsh weather, but the crows remain close. The pair of bald eagles are back.

I’ve lost interest in almost anything I used to be interested in. I’m easily made anxious by any media. I avoid friends and any kind of activity. The poor grocery store clerk says the wrong thing and I’m in tears. I’m a pain in the ass. I don’t care. I’m done trying to be anything but honest, but I know most people will be uncomfortable in my presence. Let me spare them the ugly dissolution of my former self. Let me not pretend to codify their expectations. Something in me has died and I will not attempt to revive it. It’s free to go. I’m okay with not knowing who I am anymore. When I allow myself to sit with anger, it dissipates into grief. It loosens me and I can breathe again.

Awake in the middle of the night, I meditate. Last night I fell back to sleep and had one of those wild dreams where I am obviously visiting another time and place. I asked where I was, and was given a specific name. That isn’t unusual. Neither is getting up at 9am to Google it and finding out it exists, although as an ancient ruin. It was a vibrant community last night in my dream. I can only imagine that I was there for healing purposes. That is the prayer I fell asleep with.

These days I can read good writing. I can listen to good poetry. And I can look to Tiokasin Ghosthorse for inspiration, because he lives his life as a verb. As he wisely tells me, “do not try to heal the earth. Let the earth heal you.” Don’t try to understand your dreams; let your dreams understand you.

Dec2

faith

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Let me explain what faith is and how it works. Because your life depends on it. And you are not going to grow, have peace, or live any life worth living until you get honest with yourself about this.

Let’s start with what faith is not: it is not religion. It has little or nothing to do with religion. It is, however, a basic and essential element of your spiritual, emotional, and psychological makeup. It is your connection to God, the divine, life force, intuition – whatever you want to call your inner knowing. There is no inner knowing, or even ability to connect with your authentic self, without faith. It’s the connective tissue of spirit. Without it you’re screwed. You had best become comfortable with it sooner rather than later.

I’m addressing this today because I am in a pissy mood dealing with other people’s lack of faith. No less than four people reached out to me this morning for advice they won’t use. Specifically, half dozen family and friends who want to cry, whine, and vent about the narcissists who treat them poorly. Who undervalue them. But they don’t really want to change anything. They don’t want to let that relationship go, to be precise. They don’t want to quit the job or the marriage. They don’t want to face their fear. They want the other person to get it and change.

Now, lest you think I might be flip or impatient here, let me tell you that I have been listening to the same sob stories for years from these few loved ones. Many years. Maybe decades. Same story, different day. But when I offer some fairly mature, sound advice, they balk – and become immediately defensive. There we go with that defensive shit again. They explane ‘a me…for the umpteenth thousanth time, why they can’t leave. And my mind just tunes it right to the station it is – faithlessness.

I don’t care what you think is the perfectly justifiable reason you cannot leave the narcissist. There is only one reason: lack of faith. And it is costing you your life. Own that decision.

When I decided to leave my narcissistic husband, I had no money. We had less than 5K in equity in our home, which we would split. It wouldn’t cover moving costs. I had no job. No income. Nothing worth selling. No savings. I was 60 and not yet eligible for social security. Nothing. So, your excuse of not enough money doesn’t hold sway with me. I left with nothing. Myself and two dogs to support. NADA. But IT WAS THE RIGHT THING TO DO. I jumped and the net appeared, not the other way around.

There are many, perhaps most, people who would never leave their hated job until securing a replacement. I’m talking to you. I have lost more friends over this issue. I do not want to hear about you hating your job. Quit. Now. STOP MAKING EXCUSES. Pick up your coat and walk out RIGHT THIS MINUTE. Or stop complaining. Do not tell me what your bills are. That is entirely irrelevant.

A (now estranged) old friend, who happens to be a PhD. psychotherapist, would tell me that this is black-and-white thinking, and that it is dangerous. But she remains married to a narcissist, so I will aver that she, in fact, has nothing of value to offer her codependent clientele. She doesn’t walk her talk. She makes excuses. Because…no faith. And then, I must tell you that black-and-white thinking IS THE ONLY APPROPRIATE WAY TO THINK in this culture. In a dualistic environment all energy is divided by good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, right or wrong, love or fear. In a dualistic environment black-and-white thinking is the only appropriate response. If you want to outgrow that limitation, you will have to exercise…guess what?

There is NO justifiable reason to put up with any kind of abuse. And let’s define abuse while we are at it. I adopted this definition from a therapist I met in my 20’s, because I have never been able to prove her wrong: ALL THOUGHT, WORD, AND DEED IS EITHER NURTURING OR ABUSIVE. Period. There is nothing else going on here. Are you being nurtured? No? You walk away. Next question.

If you are rationalizing and adapting to anything that does not serve you well, you are making excuses. You are 100% willing to compromise your health and well-being to accommodate someone else’s agenda. You cannot be free from there. You are enslaved. Whether you physically can’t leave (you are in a body cast) or you are feeling obligated to stay, or guilty, you are not free. And you are willingly participating in a dysfunction that is harmful to everyone concerned.

Faith is your spiritual muscle, and either you exercise it or it atrophies. And just like charity, or compassion, it starts at home. With you. Right now. So cut the crap. Stop waiting for the knight on a white steed, or your one dollar lottery ticket to make you a billionaire. Muster up some courage. Grow a pair. Take a chance on yourself. Show some faith. Don’t look backwards for guidance to chart new territory. Take a leap of faith and then ask God what’s next. “Lead me.” And know that you will get an intuitive hit, an idea, an inkling – and then you will act on it. Do not reason it away. Do it. No matter how insignificant it seems, or how crazy it sounds. Don’t tell anybody. Don’t run it by four people. Do it.

You don’t hear intuition like that? You aren’t just quite sure…? Well, duh. How do you expect to hear God if you won’t trust? The trust comes first. The faith comes first, by it’s very definition. You don’t find the right job until you leave the wrong one. What if you make a mistake? You’ll learn how to be discerning about what is and isn’t intuition. You’re exercising your faith muscle. You are hard-wired for faith. It won’t take long for you to see tangible evidence.

I’m gonna tell you something else that sounds radical: lack of faith is mental illness. Prove me wrong. And let me close with this thought: that this awareness requires my forgiveness, for I, too, lack faith at times. I, too, am just practicing here.