Since mid-October, I’ve spent every spare second I have, many long three-day weekends, at my mother’s getting her house ready to sell. Sorting through closets, drawers, garages, trunks, rummaging through old photos, baby cloths, letters, old jewelry, etc. My mom has lived at this house for 20 years. There’s a lot of stuff to go through. We are also painting bathrooms, updating hardware, reframing broken artwork, repotting plants, selling old beds, buying new ones, and putting together IKEA furniture for the staging of the house.
We are re-viewing and re-making a life.
Astrologically, this is a pretty powerful time to be sorting through my mother’s basement. Mercury went into retrograde on Nov 24th and will stay there until Dec 13th. We are also in the middle of a solar eclipse (Nov. 25th) and a lunar eclipse (Dec. 10th). Mercury retrogrades invite us to review, revision, reorganize, revamp and retell our story before moving ahead with the business of manifestation. The two eclipses push hidden energies from the unconscious into the light. There is an emotional volatility to the process as eruptions in the psyche make their way to the surface.
I also have to mention the powerful winds that have been blowing through the Bay Area over the last several weeks. The upheaval has mirrored and affected my inner process greatly, as old dust and dried-up matter are swirling about in the psyche. (My lips are also super chapped!) It has been so much to process and work-through I have felt assaulted by it at times. At other moments, the fast winds of change have felt like a great opportunity to shed old skin. Surrendering to the power of the wind, letting go, letting it take away what no longer serves. It’s easier to give-in and practice the art of surrender when the workshop presents itself.
Letting go into the process of sorting through my mother’s house is very much a practice in engaging the unknown. Each drawer is full of surprises – exciting, tender and terrifying. There are plenty of lost treasures we have come across, photos of great times our family shared, but we are also forced to face emotions and parts of our life covered over by avoidance or forgetfulness.
My mom has been so brave in facing some of her hidden boxes – the things we all shove into the back of the closet. We sold her old wedding ring unused for 20 years, sorted through condolence letters from when her sister died 17 years ago, and let go of the bed she’s slept on for 40 years.
I’ve also had my hidden boxes to deal with. As we were cleaning out the last of the garage, I kept eying two boxes up on the top shelf in the back corner. I wasn’t sure exactly what I would find in them, but I knew they were full of something I had been ignoring for five years and that the time had come to face it. So I carried them straight to my car and decided I would open them when I got home.
Here’s what I found: A box full of photos and memorabilia from my wedding, and a box full of journals taking me back to my early 20’s. I had placed that box of wedding photos in my mom’s garage five years ago when my marriage ended and the grief was insurmountable. Time has passed and I felt ready.
I spent a long evening sorting through the photos. Remembering the joy and ecstasy I felt on my wedding day. Going through memories of a love that spanned 12 years of my life. A great love with a great man, a truly wonderful time. I felt a little weepy but mostly grateful, appreciating a formative chapter in my life and the chance to learn and grow with a remarkable friend and partner.
Reading through my journals, it’s hard not to chuckle at my consistency. I’ve been writing about the same things forever: Dreaming my life into reality, earnestly trying to learn as I live, years of attempting to birth the inner artist, to trust in life, bring my gifts into the world, open to abundance, and writing poetry through it all. I’ve been actively giving myself permission to have my own life and my own experience for a very long time. I’ve been wrestling my resistance energies, the self-critic, and the fear of freedom as well.
There were many journals dedicated to my personal growth, morning pages from The Artist’s Way, three years of studying with Mary Swanson, a great class on The Shadow I took at College of Marin in 1998, a conference I went to with Angeles Arrien in 1999 and a Fearless Journal class I took with Heather Bleasdell in 2001.
I have been drawing crows and writing poems about feathers and wings long before I consciously dedicated my life to being a Crowrider.
I have felt overwhelmed by the amount and magnitude of the visions and ideas that knock relentlessly at my door.
I have always loved Joni Mitchell, Frida Kahlo, and dramatically writing about my feelings.
I’ve been putting “paint on a big canvas” on my To-Do List for fifteen years.
I have prayed to serve the world for a very long time.
I have prayed for more alone time for the same amount of time.
The themes of our lives, the deep questions, the losses and the learning weave through our life strongly carrying the dream of the soul and the painful initiations that either urge the soul forward or impinge on it’s unfolding. Looking back, digging in, and facing what I had avoided for some time, leaves me knowing there is such a thing as right timing and the things that scare us aren’t as scary as we think.
In this time of strong winds, as the darkness, and hidden things in the shadows beckon us, as we are invited to re-examine and re-tell our stories ask yourself:
What hidden box are you ready to open?
What does the past want you to remember?
What are you afraid to face?
What could you retrieve from the areas of your life you are avoiding?
What if it’s not that scary after all?
Messages from the past:
“Thoughts are energy and energy is real stuff. Energy follows your intention.” – Mary Swanson ’01
“What I really want is myself.” Laura Tabet ‘98
“It’s amazing what we can accomplish and heal through imagination.” Laura Tabet ‘01
“If we have faith in another’s process we don’t need to control it.” Heather Bleasdell ‘01
“A miracle is a shift in perception.” Angeles Arrien ‘99
The door of our comfort zone is always open, we emerge from our bird cage without thought of return.” Angeles Arrien ‘99
“Life is about what you love, not what loves you.” Laura Tabet ’03
“What I want is sacred.” Mary Swanson ‘02
“We can always point to a physical reality to find evidence. But you affect your physical reality.” Mary Swansons ’03