Healing for the Earth, Day 11: Everyone is a Hero for Going Through This, Have Compassion

Hello dear fellow Earthlings,

Wow, so many emotions coming out now. Do you feel that? It's an Earthling thing.

Every little word feels likes it's charged with so much emotion. The world is a bundle of emotions right now. We are ALL processing so much.

I'm grateful for each and every one of you. ALL of you are heroes just for going through this. From the doctors and nurses who are on the front lines, to the people all alone in quarantine with no family around, to the person who has a loved one in the hospital, to the person who has just lost their job or home, to the people who are sick and struggling for their lives.


ALL OF US ARE IN THIS TOGETHER.

If you are feeling lots of emotions today or feeling alone, this little video I made today may help:

You might think only a few people are affected by this. I don't believe that. We are all affected in one way or another by what's going on. Life will never be the same after this.

Today, I was feeling rather emotional. I've been pretty grounded, but I got caught up in a swirl of emotion. It was a feeling of unsettledness. I envied people in quarantine with their lover or their family. How lucky you are to have your lover or family with you. How lucky! Hold them close.

I'm out here without my boyfriend and who knows how long I'll be out here without him. It's not easy to be alone when things are so uncertain. That's also the heroes journey. We come into this world alone and we die alone. If you can learn to be alone in the midst of all of this, you are my hero and I SEE you!

Actually, each one of us is on the hero's path for just being alive on the EARTH! It is not easy to be a human being. We go through sooo much in one lifetime. There are deaths and divorces and losses and pain and disease and uncertainty and natural disasters and war and...the list goes on. Every one of us has been touched by some kind of trauma. Every single one of us.

So if you think one person's got it easy and another's got it hard, think again! You are looking from the outside at a person. You are NOT that person and you have no idea what they are going through.

So have some COMPASSION for each and every Earthling. Especially NOW when we are all going through this.

Today I realized that I had to just GET OUTSIDE again. It's what grounds me and brings me back into connection with the planet and what it means to be here and connected to all things.

The streets out here where I live were deserted. It was like a ghost town. Then, suddenly, out of nowhere came a car driving at 40 miles an hour down the residential street I had just turned down. She was driving so close to my bumper that I thought she might hit me. Her face looked angry. I thought about pulling over, but I was almost to one of two parking spots in front of the beach, so I just kept driving and rolled into a spot. She took the other spot and got out of her car and gave me a death glare. If looks could kill I'd be dead.

I stayed in my car as she got out. I watched her walk with a bit of a limp. It seemed like she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. At first I felt angry that she had spewed her anger out on a stranger. What was wrong with her? I came to the beach to be in peace and I felt upset.

As I walked down the beach,  one of the few places we are still allowed to walk, I was able to release some of that anger. I had no idea what this woman was carrying. What if her husband had the Coronavirus? What if she was alone and couldn't take it anymore (I could relate to that somewhat)? What if she had just had a fight? What if she had just found out she lost her job? What if she didn't know how she was going to make ends meet?

Suddenly I began to feel compassion. I began to forgive myself too for being upset. I let it all wash off me. I let the waves come and take those emotions and thoughts out to sea. I then filled that empty space with compassion for myself first and then for this woman.

It was a stormy day on the beach. It was dark and cloudy and cold and a bit ominous. There was a thickness in the air. It was hard to see far out in the distance, like driving through a fog. It's that feeling of not seeing where you're going but trusting you'll eventually get there, wherever there is.

It was starting to get darker and I looked out across the water and could see the light house at the end of Dungeness Spit. The Spit is closed to the public, but the light at the end was still blinking. I stared at it through the dark clouds and at that one little spot of light and it brought me hope.

Wherever there is darkness, there is also light. Have compassion for each person out there. You have no idea about what they are going through. Have compassion for yourself  for all the emotions you may be feeling. We WILL get through this and be stronger for it. You are all heroes just for going through this.

Much love,
Katherine

Hello Darkness, Hello Light

Dear Earthlings,

I was alone in the house organizing a few of my boxes of things, when everything went dark and silent. I stepped out of the bedroom and felt along the wall to the living room where I knew I had a candle and lighter. The wind was howling outside and it must have blown the power out. I stepped out on the deck and could see swirls of snow spin on the golf course like mini tornadoes. I was aware that it was getting colder inside the house. I found other candles and lit them. Eventually, I found a flashlight.

The strangest thing was that as I was going through a box of my writing, I found a loose piece of paper with a dream written on it about the end of the world. Every night I've been dreaming these dreams again. I see buildings falling down and water flooding streets. Somehow I'm able to just observe it all, as if I'm watching a movie. I see it happening, but I'm strangely not affected by it. Instead of jumping into the swirl of chaos and panic with everyone else, I stand a distance back and observe. Somehow, in my observing of the chaos, I get answers and solutions, but they hard to put into words because they come from the dream realm.

I know that I'm meant to be out here. In the dark last night, I felt I should be scared, but I wasn't. Instead, I felt a kind of returning. We have lost connection to the darkness. We depend so much on light. Without electricity to fuel our devices and appliances, we are lost.

In the darkness, with just a candle, I felt a deep connection to the wild world outside. Just before dawn, before the power went out, five deer walked in a single-file line past my bedroom window. They seemed to glide with extreme grace, ears twitching with alertness.

These animals bring me to the answers. This is native land. What's the point of being out here if I don't take time to tune in.

I could not walk yesterday in the blizzard-like winds. I watched the snow rapidly accumulate outside the living room window. By the late afternoon, the snow was blowing sideways towards the window and then the wind would shift and it would blow in another direction. After the power went out, I gathered candles, a flash light, warm clothes, a down comforter and hunkered down in the living room near the gas fireplace.

Around 11pm, the power was restored and I returned to the bedroom.

I awoke when light began to stream in through the blinds. It was quiet outside. I did not hear wind. I got up and made myself some tea and returned to the bedroom to get dressed. I bundled up in a long down jacket, scarf, hat and gloves before leaving the house.

I walked along the property line of Graysmarsh farm towards Graysmarsh Beach. All of a sudden I began to hear trumpets. I thought I was going crazy. The sun was hitting the snow and making everything extremely bright. Through a gap in the trees that created a boundary around the farm, I saw huge white swans, that I later learned were trumpeter swans, flying in circles above the fields of snow on the farm. They literally sounded like trumpets.

It was beautiful and heavenly. The image of huge white swans above bright, white snow making the most angelic sound touched me to my core and opened my heart. I don't know the language of these animals I see, but I often times I feel like I do. They all call me to slow down and tune in. Maybe that is the answer.

People talk of darkness and it is there. I don't watch the news out here and I've stopped Facebook for awhile. I want my media to come from nature. It's been speaking for a long time.

I feel every moment I'm able to step lightly on the Earth and listen, it's another moment of awakening to a world that has always been there for us and only asks us to listen.

A Bridge to Another World

Dear Fellow Earthlings,

 Last night I dreamt that I was in Europe and got an opportunity to take a trip to a very mystical place. My friends had only one extra ticket and invited me. I can't be sure of the country, but it was snowy and cold, so the place felt a bit like Sweden or Norway or.....Narnia? My friends picked me up in a neighboring country and we drove over the border and high up in the snowy mountains towards a castle that was on an island. In order to visit this castle, we had to cross a bridge thousands of feet above the frozen water below. This was fine, except the bridge was made entirely of snow and it was very narrow. Only one car could pass at a time and there were no guardrails. Just setting out to cross this bridge could mean an untimely death, yet the castle on the other side was something not to be missed and the snow bridge itself, on the way to the castle, was celestial. We decided to risk it. The car swerved a bit on the bridge and many times we came very close to the edge. I remember feeling my heart in my throat looking down over the edge while watching snow fall. We did eventually get to the other side, but I don't remember much of the dream after that. I think the journey getting there was more interesting than the actual place.

Perhaps this dream is a metaphor for life and maybe a metaphor for my life right now, particularly. I can feel that I'm about to walk out on the edge again. I can feel I will complete my next book....finally. I have a ways to go, but I have carved out 4-5 days a week to work on it starting in January. I am afraid, actually, that I won't finish it and it is so important to me to do so. In fact, I have two books I'm working on simultaneously, one is the first book in a trilogy of fiction books and the other is a memoir or somewhat of a sequel to my first book. It takes so much energy to put myself out there again. Sometimes it feels like crossing a bridge that will never end. It's so much easier just to stay in my comfort zone and not do it, but I also feel it's the most important work I will do and have done. The memoir is calling me the strongest and I feel it will inform my trilogy series, so I would like to finish the memoir first.

I've been a bit melancholy. This turning-clocks-forward thing is getting me down. At 4:00pm, it's practically dark outside. I couldn't take just sitting inside when I got off from work, so I pulled off my work clothes and slipped into jeans and my down jacket and walked to Whole Foods for dinner and then upstairs to East West Bookshop for an astrology reading. The woman there confirmed that I would finish my book(s) and that they would be successful, but that it would be work and I'd have to stay focused.

 It's been a little over a month since I've turned 50. Today I found a video of a Kickstarter I created 10 days before my 45th birthday. I was still married then. In the Kickstarter, I asked friends and family to donate to help me be able to take time off to write. I never put it out there.

Perhaps there was just too much going on with my life? In fact, less than a year after making that video, my marriage fell apart and instead of moving forward, I went into a deep, dark cave of grief. I had felt so much confidence and the end of my marriage set me way back.

Over the last 4 years, however, I've made  huge leaps and bounds in my life. I created a new character, Venus on Fire, and performed a burlesque show in front of dozens of strangers on Capitol Hill in Seattle, I made a new boyfriend, I set up a psychic business and have taught many intuitive writing classes. I left my Seattle home that I shared with my ex-husband for almost 13 years and I've lived in Hawaii and traveled to Australia, New Zealand, Italy, France and Switzerland. In Italy, I co-led a retreat in Tuscany with 9 people. I did Pet Sitting in Port Townsend, Seattle and Italy. I have lived in my co-worker's basement apartment for a little over a year and I will move to my mom's in Sequim on December 15th for the winter to write and teach one class mostly online. Who knows where I will go after that?

I am moving forward and doing all the things I've dreamed of. In fact, often my dreams are so clear that they truly inform my waking life. I feel the Hood Canal Bridge on my way to Sequim could very well be that bridge to another world. I feel my life WILL open in more ways than I can imagine. I'm moving forwards. It's not a question of IF and not even a question of WHEN. It's happening RIGHT NOW. I'm on THAT bridge! There's no going back....

Divine Earthly Experience 9: The Connection of Facebook to Depression and Isolation

"There is also the question of why many users spend so much time online. People who are already mildly depressed or feeling socially isolated may log onto Facebook as a way of connecting with others or to relieve their own sense of sadness. Unfortunately, being subjected to repeated evidence that other people have more interesting lives often has the opposite effect."—Romeo Vitelli, Psychology Today 

Hello Fellow Earthlings,

How are you? It's been a little over a week since I unplugged from Facebook. It's strange. There is even a name for this. It's called "virtual suicide." However, I don't think I fit into that category because I'm here virtually on this blog. I don't miss Facebook or social media, strangely. It occupied a fair share of my time and I see now that I'm glad to have the space to do other things. I had to actually "deactivate" my account because I knew that if I stayed on it, I'd check it somehow.

What is the reason to remain on Facebook or other social media? I guess it's a way of connecting and not feeling isolated. It's a way of saying, "Hey, my life is good!" or "I'm not okay." We can also check in on others to see what they are doing.

A friend at work said she is also thinking about leaving Facebook. She read a study that Facebook can cause depression because people read about how wonderful everyone's lives are and they start to compare and realize that they don't have such an amazing life. It can make you feel like something is missing or something is wrong with you.

I, too, was in the habit of posting photos, etc. of awesome experiences I was having. Not surprisingly, the mood I chose to display most of all on Facebook was "awesomeness." To be honest, even in the dark periods of my life, I often found the silver lining and something positive to share. I am a firm believer in the fact that what you focus on in life is what will show up for you. I choose to focus on the positive. But I'm not immune to sharing difficult experiences with others and I did so both here and on Facebook and luckily many people reached out and could relate.

I had dinner with a new friend last night in REAL TIME. She's only known me since things have looked up in my life, since after my partner of 20 years left. She doesn't know how heart-wrenching that was for me. She was not there. From her perspective, I post too many positive photos of my recent experiences on Facebook. She had no idea that I am no longer there. I know the reason why she said it. I know it's because she is currently having a really hard time.

But I don't think the answer is to be angry at people for posting cool photos, positive quotes, cute baby or cat pictures, inspiring ideas or even for people tooting their own horns for doing something awesome (i.e. getting married,  having a baby, getting a promotion, starting a business, getting a book deal or record deal). This is LIFE and people tend to want to focus on the positive. I love reading about all the inspiring things my friends are doing.

It sure beats the negative and we have plenty of that in our world and our lives, don't we? During the last election, I steered clear of social media. It just bummed me out. People were so ferocious on Facebook. The viciousness and disregard for fellow human beings was evident. I just didn't want to participate. Not because I don't care, but because I don't want to be part of energy that is vicious or mean.

I think it's okay to express darker emotions as long as we are not hurting anyone. Maybe people don't feel safe to express those emotions publicly. They feel they might be judged or gossiped about. Isn't it funny how humans operate? When we hear good news about someone, we are not always so happy for them and when we hear bad news, some of us secretly feel good because our lives aren't THAT bad. What is wrong with this picture? If we are all connected on an energetic level, my good news is your good news and the bad things I experience are also connected to you.

This is what compassion is about.

If Facebook or social media is not the place to express darker emotions, I think it's important to have a safe place to express those. We should never be afraid of how we feel because every single one of us experiences sadness, pain, defeat, loss and grief at one point or another. Just as all of us experience happiness, joy, satisfaction and love at one point or another. We are not perpetually in a state of AWESOME-NESS. Our states of mind really depend on many things and are as changeable as the weather. We could have blue skies in one area and dark clouds of doom in another and even a rainbow in the middle. There is NOTHING WRONG with the dark clouds or dark emotions, but it would seem that sometimes on Facebook or social media, dark emotions just don't exist for most people. I'm not saying these emotions are not expressed, I'm just saying they aren't as common as the rainbow and blue skies variety of updates and posts. And then it begs the question, is Facebook for real? We are not seeing the full picture. We've certainly gained a wider audience, but at the cost of real, heart to heart interactions. 

So now that I've unplugged from Facebook, I am feeling a tad bit of isolation, if I could be really honest here. I would love it if you are reading this right here and now to let me know you are there. Why? Because for this moment, we are connecting. For this short period of time in your life, you are here reading my blog and I'd love to know that.

Do you ever feel depressed, overwhelmed, sad or angry about the things you read on Facebook or other social media?