Letting go of Toilet Paper....

Fellow Earthlings,

Are you feeling it?

Panic, chaos, viruses, crazy leaders, tornadoes, school closures, no hand sanitizer and no toilet paper...these are the topics of the emails and articles coming through from afar. I feel removed and separate and it reminds me of a dream I had where I saw what was going on, but was not part of it. More about that later.

Truthfully, it's weird to be out here in Sequim already quarantined in nature. I'm out here with the eagles, hawks, deer, seals, crabs, salmon, elk. In fact, sometimes they are the only beings I come into contact with on any given day.

I'm teaching an online class at the college, so actually, I don't need to meet students and risk getting exposed. The coronavirus has taken 11 lives in Washington State and 70 people have been infected and that number is expected to rise. Governor Inslee has called a state of emergency in Washington State. My colleagues at the college are scrambling to make arrangements with their students for the end of the quarter because they may not be able to finish the quarter with their students. We are waiting to see if our college closes.

But out here, things move slowly. Since I moved out here in December, this land has been calling me to stop and TUNE IN. Whenever I have big plans to get things done, the land calls me to put it all aside and get outside. It's not that I don't get things done, it's that my plans are often interrupted by nature's schedule. If I wake up and it's sunny, I put my shoes on and go. I want to be down on Dungeness Spit breathing in the salty air and hearing the waves roar. While I'm walking, I often close my eyes and drink it all in with my entire body. I breathe in the sun, sand, wind, salt, breeze, clouds, waves and bird calls. My body vibrates with all of it. I feel stripped down to the core essentials out here.

After hiking at the Spit today, I headed to my bank to cash a check and decided to stock up on some food. I hadn't been to the store in a few days and truthfully, I didn't really want to be amongst shoppers who all had the potential of being carriers of this disease. Every time I'd hear a cough, it would propel me to wander away from whatever aisle I was on to one that was empty or sparsely populated. I'm trying not to buy into the fear, but it's there. I'd like to believe it hasn't made its way to Sequim, but my answer was there in the hand sanitizer section where I stopped in front of a gaping hole of nothingness. Same with the toilet paper section. I'd have to let those go for now.

Back in my car, I took 5th Ave past Old Olympic Highway to Evans Road. I passed trumpeter swans breeding in a nearby field of a farm with a worn-out red barn. Not a single car passed me on those roads. I turned left on Dungeness-Sequim Highway and then a right on Woodcock Road making my way past Graysmarsh Farm, a huge estate that seems to go on forever and where you can pick blueberries and strawberries in the summer, but not much is happening there right now.

I often wonder what I'm doing out here. I'm 50 years old and I'm living at home. That's the stuff people talk over fences in hushed voices with their neighbors about and here I am doing it, without toilet paper even. What has the world come to? What have I come to?

On the outside, things may look dire. But on the inside I feel this unbelievable gratitude for my life and I feel the earth vibrate with an incredible goodness. I feel the wildlife on it calling everyone to stop and listen. I feel I am a witness to this language that has no words. I move with the wind. I feel the rhythm of the earth out here. I feel the native energy. Nearby my family's house is the grave of Native American Chief Lord James Balch. There's a huge eagle totem there to honor him. He was one of the first natives to pool money together with fellow tribesmen to purchase 210 acres that is known as Jamestown. It's not a reservation, it's owned by the natives. I walk past this great chief's grave to the beach frequently. The energy is so strong around there. And I have dreams of a world that is calling us back to our origin. It's calling us back to when we listened and knew. Yes, I'm remembering this language that has no words. It comes to me in dreams.

I am not going crazy, but the world might be. I'm stopping and I'm listening and I'm hearing.

In January, there was a snowstorm that hit The Peninsula quite hard. I was alone out in Sequim. The wind was howling through the trees and shaking the windows. Right before the power went out, I found a dream I wrote on paper about the end of the world. Minutes after I finished reading it, everything went dark. I felt along the wall to the living room where I knew I had candles and matches and I  lit candles all around the room and lit the gas fireplace. I was warm inside, but I wanted to feel the swirl of nature outside, at least for a few minutes. I stepped out into the howling wind and felt cold snowflakes hit my face. I was barefoot on the deck. I could see the glowing red eyes of deer huddled under pine trees. They had been sleeping there in front of the house for a month unafraid. I felt their presence daily and knew they had messages for me. Back inside, I piled blankets on top of me and huddled in front of the gas fire place and read my dream again.

I have lost the piece of paper with the dream on it. I know it's somewhere. Anyway, here's the gist of it:

People were in a panic. There was some kind of tsunami happening and waves were crashing all around and buildings were falling down. People were running through the streets screaming and police cars were zooming around with their sirens blaring, but I was inside an old cave watching all of this from afar as if watching it on a movie screen. It was real and in front of me, but I was not part of the madness. An old man with a very long beard, I imagine Confucius to look like, was sitting cross-legged in the dirt also watching. Just then I grabbed a stick and began to draw a line in the dirt. I drew two inches forward and three inches backwards. My hand moved effortlessly and I don't recall I knew what I was doing with my logical mind or even if I was doing it. The old man bowed to me and told me it was about balancing the planet. I felt very calm and collected and sure that things would work out and rebalance. There was nothing to do, it was more about be-ing.

I don't believe it is about magic or miracles or anything out of the ordinary. I just believe it's about tuning in and listening. Most of our lives we move in the way our fellow humans move. If one person panics, we all begin to panic. What if we didn't panic and follow the crowd, but chose to really stop and listen deep within and move from there? What if we allowed our deep inner experiences to guide us on the outside rather than allowing the outside to dictate our inner state. I'm letting my inner compass guide me out here. I'm completely unafraid. I trust things will work out even if everything looks like it's falling apart and more importantly, even if there's no more toilet paper.

Going Backwards at Full Speed

Hello fellow Earthlings,
I'm alone in Sequim today and I've been really contemplating what this life is for? Don't get me wrong, I'm not at the end of my rope, but sometimes it feels like I'm going backwards at full speed.

 I spent the holidays in a remote, small cabin with my family for 3 nights. Try that out. I dare you. Whatever you believed you were or how much you thought you knew what you were doing and where you were going, family reminds you of all the things you'd rather not dig up or get into. I'm talking about beliefs, politics, your foibles, those things you did (even though you don't do them anymore) that define you for life. "Remember when..." It's like family has put a big stamp on your forehead. A tattoo, if you will, that says, "Loses keys, is DIVORCED, doesn't have children, posts too much on Facebook, has an easy life, doesn't care about others, lives paycheck to paycheck, doesn't have it together." The stupid thing is that I actually care about what people think, particularly my family, but they will never, ever completely get me because they aren't interested in getting me. They are just interested in coming together, with all of their individual beliefs and ideas about how this life should be lived, and celebrating the holidays together because that's what families are supposed to do and we are family.

 For the most part, we were able to do that. We cooked together, complemented on each others' cooking, walked together in the snow, talked, sat in the hot tub and around the fire. We recalled stories and mingled and played games and all was well and I did feel happy to be with them because, after all, we never know how much time we've got with one another.

What I discovered is that as long as we stayed away from all the things that each of us really believe in, we were good. As long as we didn't really scratch more than the surface of each person's life or interests or what made them really tick, we were good.

Until we weren't good. Until we were going full speed backwards down a snowy driveway heading straight for a garage door with my boyfriend at the wheel. He had lost control on the ice. The only thing I really wanted to do was jump out of that car into a snow bank and disappear. But we were all in this together, like it or not, and it was a family effort to get us out.

I thought my sister's family was already merrily heading down the road heading towards Leavenworth. The right back tire of our car, the Suburu my dad and step mom rented, was stuck in the snow bank. We all got out to evaluate the situation and I heard my brother-in-law shout from the top of the driveway, "Are you guys okay?" Well, I was actually relieved that they were still there. My step mom, who has bad knees, and I cautiously made our way to the bottom of the driveway and let the others work it out. They took a shovel and dug dirt up and put it under the tires and spread salt around and made cracks in the ice with a shovel. Eventually, my boyfriend gunned the engine and made it to the top of the snowy slope alone. The rest of us were at the bottom of the driveway and it took some effort to get my step mom up the driveway as she doesn't walk much these days and especially not in icy, snowy conditions. It was a group effort that took about 30 minutes to solve and it wasn't long before we were all on our way again.

And maybe that's just it. Maybe family are actually the people who soften the blow when we are going backwards at full speed. I say this from the warmth of my mom and step dad's house in Sequim, Washington. They are snowbirds and leave the Pacific Northwest for Arizona each winter. They have given me the chance to stay in their house this winter and write and teach my online class at the college. They've given me the gift of this space, even if they don't fully understand me or how I live or what I am doing.

Today I called my boyfriend on the drive out to Dungeness Spit. I can't get cell phone reception at the house.

 "I don't think I know what I'm doing anymore or what this life is for. I feel really bummed out," I said.

"You have a great life, Kathy. I know I can't convince you of this, but you do. I'm sorry you are feeling sad."

We've had our own challenges, my boyfriend and I, mostly in the financial arena. In all other areas, he's a great match for me and we really get each other and love each other deeply. I've had some health challenges lately and sometimes I become scared that I don't have long to live, but yet there's lots that I'd still like to do.

My girlfriend Sherry keeps a gratitude journal. I'm thinking of starting one. How did we become such an isolated society? Life is not easy sometimes. Lately I feel like there's a dark cloud over me. I keep looking up to see the sun and just see clouds. Perhaps it's because I live in the Pacific Northwest. There's a reason why people escape to places like Arizona and Florida in the winter. It can get very depressing here.

Despite the darkness and the cold, I walked for three miles or so out on Dungeness Spit today. I listened to the waves crash on the shore and when the water receded, I drew my wishes in the sand with a bamboo stick. I wrote, in capital letters, HEALTH, BOOKS, LOVE, HOUSE, TRAVEL.

 And then a gigantic wave formed in front of me, crashed and moved like lava towards my wishes erasing any trace of them. I walked on the clean slate of beach in front of me leaving only footprints and even those were devoured. I couldn't leave a trace if I wanted to. And I learned that I wasn't going backwards, not really. I was just going. Maybe that's all I need to do.

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....

Venus on Fire and a Pilgrimage to Italy

Dear fellow Earthlings,

I'm making a pilgrimage to see The Birth of Venus this summer

Four years! It's been almost four years since I set out on a very different path. And not particularly by choice. Well, at least that's how it felt at the time. It's amazing what the inside will do to wake a person up. Sometimes being asleep seems so peaceful, easy and SAFE. But we are meant to GROW and spread our wings in this life. Not sit under a rock and wait until it's all over. Life has a way of getting our attention. It starts with little signs. Something not quite right. Then bigger things, like dreams with messages in them, or things breaking or losing things.

And finally, if that's not enough, things do just simply FALL APART.

And most of the time our reaction is like this:

Oh, no, no, no, no, no! This isn't happening!

OR

Why is this happening to me?

Think of it as an amazing blessing. Something has shook up your world to allow something more amazing to enter. This is the truth I have found. But if you would have told me that four years ago, I would have told you to f@%$ off! Because people always have words of wisdom when YOUR world is falling apart.

But coming out the other end of that long tunnel, I can tell you that this is what I've experienced. Every single catastrophe has been an amazing opportunity in my life that I'm infinitely grateful for. Had I not experienced this chaos, I would not know the life I know now.

Shortly after my marriage fell apart, I decided to join Miss Indigo Blue's Academy of Burlesque in Seattle. I signed up for a month-long class. In that class, I created a new identity. I became Venus on Fire. I spent that month using all the raw material I felt on the inside to become Venus on Fire on the outside. I got my inspiration from Sandro Botecelli's painting The Birth of Venus. In this painting, Venus is full of purity and naivete inside a white shell for all to admire. She is an image of femininity and beauty. But that's not it. To me there is so much more.

So I began my act at Oddfellows Hall on Capital Hill, Seattle inside a shell, just like the painting. But The Birth of Venus became a death on stage. It was the end of something innocent and what I believed to be true and the beginning of something powerful and beyond my control. The lights went out and everything turned to RED. There was an explosion. I came out of the darkness hidden behind huge red isis wings that revealed a new life.  I was fiery, sexy, powerful and wise. I was what Shocking Blue sang about. I was the "goddess on a mountain top, burning like a silver flame, the summit of beauty and love, and Venus was her name!"

I am Venus on Fire!

I was a phoenix rising from the ashes.

I represented all women who felt unpowerful or small or unsexy or under-appreciated.

That one act changed me. An image of me on stage was even painted by, not Sandro Botecelli, but a painter I admire. He captured my inner strength and beauty on canvas. The first picture is the actual photo from my performance and below that is the painting.

Recently I was in the hospital. I had to go to ER several times. A cramping pain in my stomach. A burning. I carry all my worry and anxiety in my abdomen. Maybe I carry the weight of the world there. For years, I've had digestive issues. In ER, after being probed and prodded and sent for various tests, including two CT scans, I was told I had diverticulitis with a micro perforation in my colon and that it can be fatal.

I thought, Great, not only did my marriage fall apart, but now I'm going to die.

In ER they wanted to do surgery. I sat right up in my hospital bed and said, "NO! I will not do that." It wasn't a plea. It was a command coming from deep within me. It was a waking up to life. Once I said it, everything in me shifted yet again. My inside said, "OK, you can choose to live, but if you do, there's a huge responsibility."

The responsibility wasn't about doing anything, it was about BE-ING. Being a spirit in a human body. Being HERE on the planet. Embodying who I am completely.

It was a shift from ticking off goals and becoming something, to being right where I am in this moment. And the next moment. And the next moment. One at a time.

It's hard for me to do that. I was used to just forging ahead with my agenda. I wasn't accustom to stepping back and letting go and seeing what happens. I wasn't used to letting the river chart it's own course and letting it carry me. I could still set intentions, but the realization that there were larger forces at play, that what I wanted didn't just include me, was huge. I am part of an intricate web of life that affects the entire whole. I am a co-creator of what happens to me. When I let go, there's so much more there. So much richness is there, even in the pain, chaos, unsettledness, and unknowing.

In April, I set an intention to make a pilgrimage to Italy to see Sandro Botecelli's The Birth of Venus painting in Florence. I set that intention and let it go. Now, 50 days before my 50th birthday, I will be there with like-minded seekers. They are healers, artists, writers, dancers and lovers of life. How fortunate to make this pilgrimage together with these beautiful people.

I will be in Italy and Europe for almost 6 weeks. I will work on my next book, Venus on Fire, there. I expect to finish editing the book and sending it off to be published in my 50th year on this EARTH.

I know I'm being guided. We all are. When life feels unbearable. When it feels like you can't take ONE MORE THING, lean into it. Slow down. Watch a bird on a tree sing, really smell a rose or sit on a bench and feel the wind. Life whispers to us all the time. It is only trying to get our attention. It just wants us to acknowledge it.

I have three more spots on my trip to Italy. I'd love it if you'd join me and the other seekers. Please see the link here https://us3.admin.mailchimp.com/campaigns/show?id=3487893. Sometimes we stumble upon things for a reason. It may not make any sense, but there's a point. Keep walking. Moment to moment to moment.

Grazie for reading...there will be much more!