Returning to Writing
I’ve been quiet for quite some time now, and while there are lots of reasons for it (which may or may not come to light in future posts), the long and short of it is that I’ve realized that I need to be writing again. It’s how I process things. Events. Feelings. How I figure myself out. How I figure out what’s next. That was the whole point of having a blog. So I could talk things through with myself. And by posting these things, you could come along with me on the journey if you wanted. Because I learned that sometimes something I had to say would resonate or help you too. All of which is to say: Welcome back!
Example BodyGraph
Now, back in December, I posted about my move toward embracing more esoteric, spiritual, energy-based teaching and practices. Along the way, I have learned about something called Human Design. Without getting too deep into it, Human Design is all about helping you to be more of who you are and who you came here to be. It’s about learning to get back in touch with your internal authority and then act consistently with that authority.
To figure out what kind of internal authority you have and how you best make decisions, create, use, and replenish your energy, Human Design uses your birth information (date, time, location) to create a chart called a BodyGraph which maps out where the planets were at the time of your birth and approximately 88 days before. That chart provides multiple layers of information designed to help you know yourself and get back in touch with the places where the world told and conditioned you not to be yourself. It also provides information about your life purpose (hint, it’s not your job).
One of the things I love most about Human Design is that it describes the process of learning about yourself and your design as an experiment. There are no correct answers; only answers that are correct for you. You learn something, run it past your internal authority, try it out, and see if it resonates or works for you. Keep what works and throw the rest away.
Why am I telling you so much about Human Design? A few reasons. First, it has become a huge part of my process for figuring out who I am and what I’m here to do. So as I walk (and write) through this process, I’ll be talking about it a lot and using some of the jargon. My goal is to provide small explanations within the posts themselves that will allow you to understand my posts without having to do even a surface-level dive. However, in the event you find yourself wanting to learn more, I am going to create two additional spaces on my site. The first will be a reference page, where I link to all types of resources for learning more about Human Design or other related modalities for self-discovery. The second is that I am going to create my own Human Design explainer posts. During my own self-improvement process, I have become Level 3 Certified in Quantum Human Design™. I have not yet begun a practice of doing paid readings for others, although I am contemplating doing so. But in the meantime, I do want to share more about it. And creating my own posts is a win/win: you won’t have to go wandering all over the internet for information (but you can if you want to!), and I can include and highlight the things most important to me.
So, whether you’ve stuck with me from the beginning, just come back, or are joining me for the first time, I want to thank you for being here. I hope you find something fun, helpful, hopeful, and meaningful in something I’ve written.
TTFN.*
*Back in the 1990s, I was obsessed with Winnie The Pooh, especially Tigger (I still love it; just not quite to the same degree). I used Tigger’s sign-off, TTFN (Ta Ta For Now), as my sign-off on handwritten letters and emails for many, many years. I was trying to think of something to use as a sign-off here other than just my initials and remembered when this was my thing. It felt like just the right amount of fun, so I’m going with it for now for now.
Embracing the Woo
I want to start this post differently than I usually do—with a definition, a disclaimer, and an invitation.
What is “woo”? Woo, short for “woo woo” means those things that are more spiritual, out there, unscientific, and sometimes unproveable. Crystals, essential oils, flower essences, astrology, magic, light language, Atlantean teachings, past lives, starseeds, different vibrational dimensions, Human Design, and EFT (tapping) are just some of the things that can fall into the category of woo. And we each have our own unique woo tolerance depending on our own experiences, upbringings, and so forth. What you accept and believe may be well outside of someone else’s woo tolerance. Where we sit on the woo continuum and where our woo “squeal” point lies may change over our lives.
I’m telling you upfront that the content of this post contains a lot of woo so that if woo makes you uncomfortable, you can stop here. I’m not trying to change your beliefs about any of this. Where you are on your spiritual journey is exactly where you need to be.
I am sharing this story because I like for those in my life to know what’s going on with me, writing about my experiences helps me process them, and many of you have shared that you have found healing and validation when I have spoken out about subjects our society isn’t keen on talking about openly. And if you’re curious enough to read on but nothing in this story resonates with you, then I invite you to simply say, “How interesting” and move on.
Now, for background context, I have spent a little more than a year working on more esoteric, energy, and spiritual practices. I have invested time and resources to change in my daily habits, thoughts, outlook, and mindset, and engaging with astrology and Human Design to figure out my life purpose, why I am here, and what some of the challenges are for my in the years ahead.
None of this has been easy for me. I have sought support in groups of like-minded individuals, but have shied away from sharing with friends, family, and readers, because I have a lot of logical skeptics in my life, and it felt too new and precious and vulnerable to share. I was not ready to hear the nay-sayers for fear they would cause me to second guess my decisions and stop listening to my intuition, with which I was only just reconnecting and learning to hear.
I was blessed with scholarships to amazing online classes taught by strong women who began life steeped in science and logic and the left brain but whose life experiences opened them up and provided real, tangible proof of the truth of these lessons. These women and the other individuals I met in the classes and their communities helped reassure me that I was on the right path. I began to wholeheartedly embrace the woo.
Earlier this fall, it became clear that I am supposed to work on my gift of mediumship. Patrick showed up and connected me with a gifted woman who I now consider a close friend. That friend introduced me to the work of Suzanne Giesemann, a former navy officer who was an assistant to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who developed an evidence-based mediumship practice after her step-daughter’s death convinced her there was more to life than our physical reality.
For the past month, I have been taking an online course on mediumship for which I received a scholarship. I am also going to start practicing with a small group of other folks who are also working on strengthening their gifts. Part of this process has involved starting and sustaining a meditation practice and connecting with my spirit guides. And some of the things I have been asking for are for signs of contact, confirmations of messages, and other evidence that I am on the right track.
This is all background to set the stage for this story. Earlier this week, I sat at the dining room table drinking tea when I heard an electronic chirp. You know the one. The dreaded smoke alarm low battery beep. It was coming from the kitchen. And I just knew, before I even went to look, that it was going to be the really high one by the ceiling. Why? Because it was the most inconvenient one and we didn’t own a ladder to reach it.
I gave it three more chirps before I went to investigate. Yup. It was coming from the high one.
If you’re paying close attention, you’ll see two smoke alarms in this picture. One about 2-3 feet above the doorframe on the wall, and one just to the right of the same doorframe. The two square items to the left of the doorframe are the thermostat and I don’t know what.
I hauled out one of our bar height dining room chairs to stand on to see if I could reach the smoke alarm. Standing on tip toe on the chair, my fingers could indeed reach the bottom of the smoke alarm. I began trying to turn the smoke alarm left and right, to remove it from the frame, but it wouldn’t budge.
After a few minutes, I got down from the chair and rotated the smoke alarm to my right to figure out what direction it should turn, so I could focus my efforts. While I had it off the wall, I confirmed that it had a battery, that the battery had a good charge, and that it was not the source of the chirping.
I eventually returned to the chair and redoubled my efforts to get this chirping thing off the dang wall. I pushed and pushed and pushed with my fingers as best I could until I finally felt it budge. Yay!
I hopped down off the chair, flipped that thing over, and popped open the battery compartment. This is what greeted me.
It had no battery. My mind exploded. I was shook. I had just spent 15 minutes listening to this alarm chirp the “low battery” chirp when it had no battery!
I knew, in that moment, that it was a message from spirit, and I had to make a choice. I could believe the evidence of the communication in front of me and move forward honing my gifts, knowing that I was going to experience more unexplainable things, or I could turn my back and shut down my gifts again. But I couldn’t stay who I was. That was no longer an option.
Honestly, I was so excited! I have believed in spirits and trusted mediums for a long time. To see some validation of the work I had just begun felt so reassuring. But it also meant that I had to leave my comfort zone. I would have to start telling people what I was up to. If this were to become a profession, I couldn’t exactly hide it.
So I’ve sat with this story for several days. I shared it with my kiddo and my spouse and my counselor and my close medium friend. And each telling left me feeling more excited. More empowered. More validated. And it left me with the feeling that now was the time to share the story, and the background behind it, more publicly.
So here we are. Now you too have a choice. You can believe my story as I experienced it and relayed it to you. You can find some version that includes details I left out or didn’t discover that makes it “make sense” according to the “regular” rules of our existence. You can write me off as someone not worthy of belief—perhaps a Christmas fruitcake.
Whatever you decide is fine. I don’t need you to believe me. My experience and my interpretation of that experience are sufficient for me. I have chosen to share because it was an amazing moment of growth and realization for me, and I have come to love sharing those moments with you. What you do with this story now is up to you.
I hope you’ll join me on my continuing journey as I discover and hone these gifts and help support me through the challenges ahead. But if not, if it’s too woo, or whatever other reason it may be, I understand. I bear you no ill will. You’re on your own path, and it’s perfect for you the same way mine is perfect for me. And I love that for both of us.
Namaste.
PS - all of the smoke detectors in the house have fresh batteries, and the ones that were more than 10 years old (the one that chirped and one other I found that also lacked a battery were both 21 years old (!!)) have been completely replaced. Because whatever else the message was for me, I recognized a sign to update smoke alarms when I saw it.
A Day of Re-Membering
[This post originally appeared on my personal Facebook page, but as I finished it, realized it was the beginning of a return to my Blog. So it, and the post I wrote earlier today, have been re-posted here.]
I have been given so much to say today. I am trusting that each thing reaches those who need to see/hear/read it.
I just watched the 2018 version of A Wrinkle In Time. I tried to watch it when it first came to Disney+, but for whatever reason I couldn’t. The truth, as I understand it now, is I was not ready. Because I didn’t remember the first few minutes at all. If I had, I surely would not have picked today, of all days, to watch it.
As I texted Phil this morning, remember how Up kicked the shit out of our hearts while we were dealing with infertility? Well, A Wrinkle In Time “upped” its game by 100 and tore my heart out and stomped it on the floor before handing it back to me all band-aided up again.
It was, without question, what I needed to see/hear/know today, of all days. About the power of the frequency of love. About knowing and integrating my faults, my shadows, my “bad” parts. About loving others exactly where they are. Because, to paraphrase the Happy Medium: it’s okay to be afraid of the answers; we just can’t avoid them.
When I first visited Phil in Michigan in 2003, we went to Celebration Cinema and watched Love, Actually. Watching it together is something of a holiday tradition for us now. And one of our favorite lines has always been when Sam says to Daniel, “Let’s go get the sh*t kicked out of us by love.”
Here we are, 20 years later, back in the Midwest, starting over again. And I realized that this quote encompasses our entire journey together.
Learning how to love each other through our faults. Deciding we were ready to start a family. Struggling with infertility. The highs of pregnancy and birth. The lows of miscarriages and medically-fragile children. Holding each other through the storms of hospitalizations. Realizing Mira’s medical struggles were merely preparation for the bigger waves that could capsize us with Patrick. Doing our best, for ourselves and our family, through the roller-coaster of Patrick’s life and death. The 9 years since we have spent figuring out what it means to be broken; how to heal; how to move forward.
Watching as each of us, in our own time, in our own ways, begins to shine our light again. Begins to emerge from the shroud that has engulfed us for what feels like forever. As we find ourselves again. As we find ourselves anew. As we figure out who we are. Who we have become. And love each other because of and in spite of all of it.
That’s what wedding vows are: promises to ride the roller coaster of life together. You can see amazing views from the highest of heights and lose your lunch on some crazy turns and be terrified or even rendered unconscious by some of the lows coming out of those spirals. But being human—living this life to the fullest—is all about experiencing the ups and the downs and everything in between. Your soul’s incarnation was your agreement to get the shit kicked out of you by love. In all of its most beautiful, tragic, amazing, incomprehensible, sorrowful moments.
And, believe it or not, it’s always worth the ride. Why else would we fight so hard to be here; to stay here; to live longer? Because despite the pain and the hurt, the beauty and the love nourish us and keep us going. Love is always there. Even when you can’t feel it. Because—You. Are. Love. And—You. Are. Loved.
I am reminded of Katy Perry’s song “Hot and Cold”. I never realized how right she was, because she recognized the person was not hot OR cold, but hot AND cold:
'Cause you're hot then you're cold
You're yes then you're no
You're in then you're out
You're up then you're down
You're wrong when it's right
It's black and it's white
We fight, we break up
We kiss, we make up
You don't really want to stay, no
But you don't really want to go
You're hot then you're cold
You're yes then you're no
You're in then you're out
You're up then you're down
This weird miss mash of life. It’s not “or.” It’s “and.”
Earlier today, I wrote the following as a comment on a friend’s post. And I realized it’s a variation on this same theme:
We forget that life is a circle.
Difficult time raise Hard People. Hard People work to create Easy Times. Easy Times raise Soft People. Soft People create Difficult Times.
There is no cycle of creation that has no destruction. The question is whether the destruction is thoughtful, necessary, limited. Like in Michigan when they stopped natural forest fires and then began losing special trees because the seeds only broke open in the heat of the fires. The destruction is necessary for new life. But we can be targeted and intentional about it so that the new life comes without unnecessary loss of property and life.
But we forget life is a cycle. We only want the up. And it just doesn’t work that way. So instead of spending time figuring out how to turn the cycle into an upward spiral by harnessing the destructive part of the cycle, we pretend it doesn’t exist and lose all our progress when it shows up.
Image by Nik @helloimnik from UnSplash
We’re human. We forget. It’s our very nature. But when we remember? When we hang on? Those are the brilliant moments we take massive leaps forward. Jumps the size of which we never knew or believed were possible let alone that we were the ones capable of making.
I set aside today as a day of remembering for me. But I got far more than I bargained for. I am re-membering myself. The quick flashes and glimpses I have seen these past few months of me coming back to myself. Skills and talents left dormant. Gardening. Singing. Baking. Dare I say, Writing.
It’s coming back. I’m tuned back in. I found the frequency again. I finally looking forward and excited to discover what’s next. I’ll do my best to post here and at my blog, so that if you want, you can come along, too.
Namaste.
Happy 10th Birthday, Patrick
[The following was originally posted as a post on my personal Facebook page.]
Struggling with words and feelings today. It’s Patrick’s 10th birthday. But do I say it is, it was, or it would have been? I mean, it is. We use present tense for the statement about dead people all the time. It’s so and so’s 100th or 200th birthday. But we generally understand with numbers that large that these are celebratory memorial birthdays. When you say it’s someone’s 10th birthday, the expectation is they are still alive for the celebration.
And then there’s the fact that it’s the big 1-0! This is a huge birthday milestone! Double digits! I remember always hearing those words prefaced or followed by “you made it!” But Patrick didn’t make it; not corporeally, anyway. And yet, at times I’ve felt ridiculously giddy and excited this past week knowing his 10th birthday was almost here.
Phil pointed out that we’ve survived 10 years, and I guess that’s part of it. But I’ve felt unsettled each time I recognized the feelings of joy, excitement, and anticipation for today. So I’m taking the day to sit with them. Feel them. Wish my sister a Happy Birthday because it was her day first, before life overshadowed that.
I think part of it is because I heard from Patrick this week. I was on a Zoom meeting and one of the other participants noticed some energy hanging around me. Afterward, she reached out through a mutual friend to ask if I was open to figuring it out. Long story short, it was Patrick and one of my grandfathers with messages for me.
I’ve had lots of mediums and spiritually sensitive people tell me Patrick’s never left me. One friend who did bodywork on me explained that he left a little footprint imprinted on my heart and that she’d never seen anything like it before. And I’ve said for a very long time that his outsized effect on the world meant he’s still here in many ways, even if I’m not raising him. So he’s not gone. Not really; only in the corporeal sense.
And I’ve found myself pondering the fact that his birthday is so close to Samhain and Halloween, when the veil between worlds is said to be thinner.
Anyway, one of the things the medium shared with me was that Patrick was sorry he had to go. I nearly laughed. I have considered myself blessed that we were able to give Patrick a good death and that we had no regrets about the choices we made. The only thing I have ever wondered about is whether he knew that and was okay with the choices. To have that question lifted. To know that he had to go, so the choice we made to spend two weeks together as a family really was the best choice for all of us. There are no words to describe what occurred—the breaking open of my heart and its simultaneous healing. Like it shattered into pieces but was instantaneously mended with gold energy, similar to the Japanese tradition of kintsugi.
So, it’s been a big week of feelings and knowings and learnings. And today, my forever baby boy would’ve turned 10. Turns 10. Is 10. I ponder the 10th anniversary of his birth. Whatever.
As a person who knows the values of words and spends so much time looking for the just right word, knowing that this moment isn’t about the words is weird. I write to process. To share. To educate. To inform. But some things just defy explanation. Language can’t really describe the comfort brought by the hug of a close friend, the softness of a baby’s hand on your cheek, or the scent of heaven wafting off the crown of their heads. A picture is worth a thousand words for a reason. Feelings can be, too.
So today is about feelings. Sitting with them and letting myself feel them and doing my best to keep my brain out of it; removing judgment or shoulds or need tos. Living in the tension.
Loving my son. Loving my sister. Loving the new friends Patrick has brought into my life who are having their own grief experiences. Loving my family. Grieving the life I expected. The one I thought I was going to have. Learning to love the life I do have and who I have become. Feeling Happiness and joy and loss and sadness.
Because they aren’t two ends of a line. It’s not either/or. It’s both/and. Happy tears. Downpours in the sun. Gone but still here. It’s all part of life; part of our souls having a human experience. We have to feel these things. It’s why we’re here. Every feeling, every experience stems from love. The warm, fuzzy ones are offshoots of its appearance or presence and the dark, prickly ones are offshoots of its removal or absence. Go back to the source. Find the love. Remember that. That’s what I’m doing today.
Happy birthday, Patrick. I love you.
Disney Storytelling Timeline
This is going to be an ongoing and frequently updated post intended as a timeline to document the various changes in Disney storytelling. If you have additions, comments, concerns, or disagreements, please leave them in the comments. Thanks!
Beauty and the Beast - 1991
Heroine reads, love books, and rescues the prince
Aladdin - 1992
Heroine fights against arranged marriage; seeks marriage based on love
Reverses overcoming class obstacles a la Cinderella by making the female royalty and the male underclass
Pocahontas - 1995
Non-white heroine
Mulan - 1998
Non-white, non-US-centric heroine
Dip of the toe into gender issues re dress & military abilities & expectations
Lilo & Stitch - 2002
Feature Pacific Islanders
Siblings parenting siblings/absent parents
Features songs in native non-English language written/performed by a member of the represented group
The Princess and the Frog - 2009
Black heroine
Black love interest
Tiny recognition of whites intentionally trying to prevent blacks from moving up through the bankers’ actions
Brave - 2012
Heroine has no interest in romantic love
Frozen - 2013
Challenges the idea of marrying someone you just met
Villain isn’t obvious at the beginning
Big Hero 6 - 2014
First to deal with the various expressions and responses to grief/death/loss
Sibling loss
Inside Out - 2015
Trauma of moving
Utility of emotions—they are neutral; neither bad nor good
No villain
Zootopia - 2016
Directly addresses racism & bigotry, through allegory
Moana - 2016
No love interest/plotline for the heroine
Frozen 2 - 2019
Acknowledgment of family’s past bigoted/hurtful actions and being proactive to fix the harm, with knowledge and acceptance of personal sacrifice that will occur
Raya and the Last Dragon - 2021
Heroine and antagonist are both female, smart, and capable
Examines the competitiveness, fakeness, and backstabbing sometimes inherent in female friendships
Voice-casting was more representative (East Asian—but see concerns that not Southeast Asian)
Encanto - 2021
Set in Columbia
Female leader without royalty/governance lineage
Encanto
This is the first post in my discussion of important changes, additions, or inclusions in Disney storytelling. I am starting here because it is the most recent and also because it is my discussions with others about this film that was the impetus for starting this series.
Earlier today, my husband reposted a discussion post from Facebook where user Aimee Ford wrote and supported her observation that “Mariano is the most important character in Encanto. Not for the story, but for *Disney.” The post has since been removed or hidden, so I cannot link to it, but here are my screenshots of it:
I think Encanto is important because many of the characters break a mold. Here are just a few of my thoughts:
Augustin and Felix are very strong men to love and marry women who are objectively stronger and more powerful in their community and are recognized for their gifts. In “our” world, they would be seen as weak for not dominating their wives.
Augustin is in a particularly interesting position. He married into the family without powers and no expectations of getting them. Mirabel was expected to have them, but didn’t get them. He tries to empathize with her because he knows how it feels to be powerless among the gifted, but he never experienced the rejection and disappointment Mirabel did because he was never expected to be more. He has to watch his family crap all over his youngest daughter.
The head of the family is a woman. Not a king. Not a king and a queen. Not even a queen. Not anyone from whom leadership was expected. Not someone who had been groomed for power or raised learning how to bear such a huge responsibility. Just a “regular” woman. And she is in charge. Although the story involves the recognition that she made mistakes, Mirabel’s speech emphasizes that it was Abuela’s strength and sacrifice that allowed her to receive the miracle in the first place and save the family, but now the burden is no longer solely on her shoulders and she can let go and enjoy life without all of the responsibility.
I love the tensions being caused by Louisa. She is strong physically and is drawn consistent with that strength. They did not make her petite and magically strong. She looks like a physically strong person. But she in unapologetically feminine in dress and mannerisms, particularly when dancing. People are fighting about whether she is trans, but I think the beauty is that we don’t and won’t ever know. It isn’t relevant to the story and it isn’t any of our business. We have to accept her and her pronouns as is. We can’t test her DNA or look up her skirt. We have to live without knowing. And I think that is exactly the right answer.
I love that even though Dolores is interested in Mariano, she has no objections to Isabella marrying him without getting to know him because of family expectations. Indeed, arguably, Dolores knows Mariano even better than Isabella because she has heard him—as she tells him. But once Mariano is available and it is her relationship, she is not about to rush it. “Slow Down!” is her response to his proposal. Following in Frozen’s footsteps, instant marriage is off the table. I LOVE that about her!
Disney Series
Those who have known me for any length of time know that I am a lover of (almost) all things Disney. Now that they own Marvel and Star Wars, it would be nigh on impossible for me to separate myself from them forever. We watch and rewatch Disney movies in this house as background noise. We are saturated in the music and the stories, playing make-believe in the worlds that have been created. As such, these stories play an outsized role in shaping who my daughter is becoming.
As you may be aware, Encanto came out late last year and finally appeared on Disney+ on Christmas Eve. The first watching left my daughter and me both in tears, and we have watched it individually or as a family probably more than once a day since then. We have had numerous discussions about what we love in the music and story, pointing out details of visual foreshadowing and little funny Easter Egg type things we find anew with each watching, and having deep discussions about how rich and powerful the character and storytelling changes is Disney are. Today, my hubby reposted someone’s Facebook post that took the position that Mariano was the most important character in Encanto, not for Encanto’s story, but for “Disney.” I thought there was a lot of wisdom there, but I thought that there were many other pieces of Encanto that needed recognition for much the same reason. After quickly dropping a few in the comments, I went on to breakfast and started to think of some major changes that had shown up in Raya and the Last Dragon. And thus, this new idea was born. This is my discussion of many of the positive changes in Disney storytelling that have come “in my time.” The dividing line for these changes could be any number of places and there is arguable support for any of them. For my purposes, I have decided to make the division pre- and post-The Little Mermaid for three reasons:
1) Disney had very much fallen out of the blockbuster animation business until The Little Mermaid resurrected it from the dead.
2) Beauty and the Beast was the first Disney animated movie I saw in the theater, and since The Little Mermaid is the movie right before it, this is the Disney “I grew up with.”
3) Disney films were only available on VHS “back in my day” and “came out of the vault” once every ten years, so I was an adult before I had seen most of Disney’s early animation films, but I had been exposed to their art and story in book form for as long as I can remember. Thus, those stories still had a significant impact on my childhood in terms of princess worship and dreams, but not in the same way that the animated movies did.
Chances are that I will not manage to say everything about a particular movie in one post, and I am not planning on doing these in any particular order. I will try to tag them for search purposes, however. So, if you’re interested, I would love to have you come along on my journey through changes in Disney storytelling.