After Loss

In the Four-Fold Way, Spring is about paying attention to what has heart and meaning. This Spring I experienced a series of deaths. Everything fell away but grief and loss and letting go. Clients and teaching gigs disappeared, making way for what was to come. While fully inhabiting mourning, I also wondered what was coming next.

Like water flowing downhill, new life and potency fills any void. But it often doesn't feel fast enough. We feel the drought, the lack, and forget to notice all that makes up the dry creek bed. Being curious about what is here at rock bottom soothes our impatience and strengthens our trust in the cycle of change.

Out of my dad's passing came tremendous creativity, love, and healing. My siblings and I shared live music, original writing, video, and artful crafts in our homemade memorial ceremony. And though the reason for gathering was sad, it was a great family reunion.  Lots of laughter and reaffirmation of who we are as good, kind, and loving people. This strengthens me and has been deep soul retrieval. 

I've also let go of the story of struggle in building my practice. Allowing more ease and organic growth to arise. It certainly helps to be working with a great coach, clearing limiting beliefs and taking concrete action. And while I don't know what exactly is coming for Wild Imagination, I'm dreaming it up again as a way to restore Beauty and Balance.

All this life arising, right in tune with Summer, the Visionary season and my next post.

Plum tree teachings

Ten days ago the 20' plum tree in front of my house did a slow motion dive onto a car and needed to be cut down. This Standing Person (indigenous people call trees Standing People) was a guardian to the house and provided a great home for chattering and preening finches, sparrows, hummingbirds.  It also offered partial screening for my bay windowed studio room.  Now the house feels a bit naked and exposed to the street.

Initially I was sad, but have accepted that this poor tree was living on borrowed time.  It had never been pruned properly, hadn't bloomed well this year, and apparently had serious root problems.  I wonder what in my life has not been well-grounded or has been too top heavy to flourish.  What wants to be uprooted to make more space in my life?   


And as we take our time to replace it with another tree, I'm getting used to more light, more space, and our house being more visible.  Perhaps the plum tree bowed out so we can have a bigger perspective and connect our inner worlds and the outer one.

I'm thinking of all this while my 15 year old cat's kidney problems are being diagnosed and my father falls further into Alzheimer's and physical decline.  Mostly I am holding a space of curiosity about what new thing comes on the heels of loss.  As Winter gives way to Spring, new life unfolds. 




How have you experienced loss and its unexpected gifts?  Would love to hear.  RIP, plum tree.  Thanks for everything!

The Veil

The ancient Egyptians intimately connected life and death, with their mummification and preparing the dead for the next life. I made this collage in the spring. Rediscovering it now, fiddling with it in Photoshop, adding the sands of time, I see it freshly.

You see, an important stranger recently died, someone I'd sat with in healing ceremonies a few times.

In the week between his accident and his death, I felt inexplicably happy for him. Several others and I just kept seeing his smiling face that whole week he was in a coma. I felt no worry, knew he was somehow fine, despite the medical prognosis. I knew he was preparing for some next big thing and was already free.

I can only hope that he did not suffer, that he was in essence gone at the time of the accident. Perhaps he was just patiently waiting for his loved ones to get used to the idea of losing him. I like this idea, for he was a truly generous person.

These are the mysteries. We don't know. Years ago a close friend, trying to prepare me for the loss of him, told me that the relationship continues. Over the years, having him as an Ancestor, feeling his continued care, I really get how the love continues in a different way.

For many people around the world, this is not news. Still, we are pitiful humans and we get attached to that smile, the enfolding arms, the smell of each others' hair. Even though we can't have them back, we can choose to carry on with the love.

We can serve our Ancestors by living our lives well and heeding their teachings. My husband and I are keeping a spirit plate for our important stranger's year of transition to Ancestor land. We give food offerings to fuel his journey.

And we can look to them for support in the myriad of invisible, palpable ways they are here to back us up. I feel their love and blessing in all that I do. I choose a connected world.