Going Deep at Dawn

Hello fellow Earthlings,

It's 2020. Doesn't that sound like science fiction? Given that I came to the Earth in this present body in 1969 in Earth years, the year Neil Armstrong walked on the moon (THE MOON!), 2020 sounds even more OUT THERE.  And what can I say? Have we gotten more Sci Fi? Have we destroyed this planet yet?

Not yet, friends, not yet. I could never have imagined that I'd be typing my thoughts into a computer for others to read. And these strange things called Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. We live our lives with our head in devices. Devices. gadgets that are meant to make our lives easier. I will admit, my iPhone has become part of my right hand. I'm not going to toss it in the ocean. It would take millions of year for it to decompose.

I woke up at dawn. My boyfriend was snoring away on his futon he brought out here. We were on different cycles last night. He came in late from Seattle after working a full day and all he wanted to do was grab a beer and lock himself away with Netflix. I had very different plans for the New Year. I wanted to go into it with eyes wide open. No alcohol or glass clinking for me last night. You could say it was a pretty silent night and it was very intentional.

I did a vision board for the New Year. I do one every new year, but this year my vision seemed particularly important. I'm getting a HUGE sign to let go of things that do not serve me any longer. Maybe it's because I'm now 50, I don't know? A girlfriend who turned 50 five years ago or so said, "It was like I was walking through a doorway and could only bring a few things, the rest I'd have to let go of." That's how I feel.

So what am I bringing into the New Year that serves me? Love for myself and my direction and goals, love for the earth, love for my partner, family and friends, good health, abundance, travel, a house of my own, book writing and book completion, creation of my own website with online classes, retreats and readings. First and foremost is being here NOW in Sequim, Washington and finishing my book. Well, and blogging...

At dawn I pulled on my jeans from the day before, a puffy long, powder blue jacket, scarf, hat, gloves and red rain boots and headed out into the darkness. It was as if the sound of the waves out on Dungeness Spit was drawing me to it like a magnet. Before leaving, I asked my boyfriend, "Do you want to come with me down to The Spit?" He mumbled something that was clearly an indication that he wanted to sleep more, so off I went.

I drove down Woodcock Road and turned right on Dungeness Spit Drive heading past red barns and cattle and green fields with the Olympic Mountains as a backdrop. The sun was starting show signs of itself and I was in a hurry to get to the sea. I was the first car in the parking lot. I have an annual pass to The Spit. It's the longest spit of sand in the U.S. and if you walk the entire thing down to the light house and back, it would be a total of 10 miles. I have yet to do that, but I will.

I decided to take the primitive trail through the woods down to the sea. I could hear the waves crashing on the shore in the distance and I had one thing in mind. I wanted to be down by the waves. I wanted them to pound through me and shake me wide open. I wanted the undertow to take with it all of the unwanted in me and the world. Take my anger, take my fights with my boyfriend about finances, take toxic people's comments, take all the disbeliefs, take hatred, take avoidance, take addictions, take pollution and human consumption, take all the ill of the world out into the swells and break them down, smooth them out and return to the shore the light, the kindness and the highest good.

A bit idealistic, isn't it Kathy? I thought out loud. My thoughts were forming their own swells in my mind as I walked at rapid speed over the damp, moist earth through a thicket of pine trees. I walked so fast I nearly trampled over a doe and her fawn. They stared at me through those big eyes. They were as still as stones and I became still too. My stillness made them comfortable and they stayed cleaning each other and munching on vegetation in the woods. They were so close I could touch them.

I carried on and eventually the primative trail spit me out at the ocean. Not a soul was in sight and the waves were so huge they devoured the entire walking area of the beach. I thought about turning around, but they called me to them. They called me out on The Spit where I had to walk very close to the roped off area that separated the beach from the bird sanctuary. Ocean spray covered my jacket and moved like lava up over logs and over my red boots. Salt from the water was in my hair and eyes and mouth. I wanted, in a weird way, to be consumed my those waves. Maybe I secretly wanted them to TAKE ME out into their swells and churn me through their underbellies smoothing me out like a stone with perfect rings around it that a fellow hiker might pick up and skip out into the quiet sea making new wishes for the new year.

A rainbow appeared in a cloud across from The Spit, illuminating the land on the other side. Snow mountains sat like majestic watchers of the land off to my left. The sun rose on the bird sanctuary side of The Spit slowly illuminating it from the lighthouse to where I stood. Majestic. All of it.

No, we weren't in danger of destroying the Earth. We were in danger of destroying ourselves and all the earth wants us to do is listen. I heard the squawking of an eagle overhead and looked straight up to catch a glimpse of it as it disappeared through the trees. I was alone on this thin stretch of sand with waves thundering against the earth.

In those moments, I felt cleansed and alive. I knew I would move forward no matter what. There was nothing stopping these waves. They were unforgiving and relentless in their will. They moved with force and purpose. And standing there, I knew I would do the same.

The Light Behind Defeat

Dear Fellow Earthlings,

I will be honest. I am still releasing negative feelings and emotions almost three years after my husband left. It is not a constant thing and most days I am quite happy, but when I am silent, I am able to dive deep down into reservoirs of darkness and negative emotions. They are there and I am trying not to be afraid of them, but rather, to work with them for my own healing.

I can't say that I've perfected being a deep sea diver. Most of the time I'm looking for my water wings. I want my noodle, or maybe two noodles, so I can bob effortlessly up and down with the ocean waves. I don't want to go deep down where there are sea urchins, sharks, sting rays and other things that could hurt me. It's dark and murky under there. I don't know what is lurking or what might hurt me and I've already been hurt. Best not to risk it again, right?

I went to a psychic recently. Actually, I am a trained psychic too. I have given many psychic readings, but it helps to also receive them. The woman who saw me confirmed that I am diving deep. So deep that most people would have turned back long ago. I've somehow agreed to do this. Even my former spouse could not go where I was going. Instead of swimming down, he doggy paddled sideways towards another woman who he ended up having an affair with. I think he believed that somehow she would save him or he could lose himself and the darkness by taking up with someone new. But it doesn't really work that way. We can get guidance and help, but no one can live this life for us. Each one of us has to go through it and the more resistance there is the harder it will be. This is what I've found.

Don't be afraid of the darkness, because behind it is a light you can't believe. Skimming the surface will never allow you to catch a glimpse of this light. You can skim through your entire life if you want. No one will stop you.  But there is so much beauty deep down in there.

I also do tarot card readings and did one for myself the other day. In my mind, there are no "bad cards," but ones we can learn from. I recently chose the card DEFEAT.

When you think of defeat, what comes to mind? For me there is a feeling of losing. I've lost something. In sports we lose to the other team. In medieval latin, the word is disfacere which means to destroy, mutilate or undo. Who wants to lose or be destroyed? No one. We are in this life to win and preserve ourselves for as long as we can.

Henry David Thoreau, in his essay called Civil Disobedience, wrote:

The mass of men leads lives of quiet desperation

We don't want waves. We don't want to dive deep and face the darkness. In fact, most of us do everything in our power to avoid the darkness. We'd take boredom and predictability over uncertainty any day.We'd rather have security and know what's what. But do any of us know what's what? I believe there's actually more struggle in holding things together than letting things fall apart. Easier said than done because, for the love of GOD, who wants to open up that can of worms and expose who we really are and how we really feel?

But what if we did let go. Instead of holding tightly to the rope of fear, what if we just let it go. Instead of clenching fists of sand, what if we watched it sift through our fingers in amusement. We are all going to die, this is true, so what is the sense of holding on so tightly?

I'm not suggesting doing anything rash, I'm suggesting to ask defeat (or any other dark emotion) to sit down with you to tea. Maybe you'd learn more than you expect. Maybe you'd see beauty where you never expected to see it.

I let defeat come in. I let it come on a walk with me and the dog I'm caring for out here in Port Townsend. There is some anger in defeat for me. I lost my spouse to another woman. The world that I believed in came crumbling down and so did my identity of twenty years. If you were to lose your spouse, kids, husband, home, animals, who would you be? Do you depend on all these others to define who you are?

I've been playing with "now what?" for awhile. I'm testing out lots of different things. Instead of quickly taking on another identity or putting all my eggs in another's basket, my larger self, or "oversoul" as I call it, is asking me to not hurry to define myself again. It's telling me to linger at the bottom of the ocean for awhile.

And at the bottom of the ocean is a deep silence. A deafening silence. And a light so bright and so warm. I  heard this silence and I saw this light in a cathedral of trees on my walk with the dog. It shone right through the dark thickness of them, inviting me to sit down and listen. This grove asked me to put down my thoughts and stories and to enter empty handed. So I did.

I currently have no home to call my own. But I do believe I'll have one again. It's easy to feel defeated when you've given away all you've got and lost so much. But the other side of that is an unbelievable lightness and joy. There's nothing to carry except the present moment. Behind the swords of defeat there is a bright light. You don't have to die to see it. It's there every moment speaking in a butterfly that flutters overhead or in a thimble berry that begs you to taste it. Life is abundant even in defeat and sorrow. Even in my darkest hour, I feel the sweetness of being alive.

No, I'm not afraid of the darkness. Instead, I feel myself outstretching my arms and asking this uncertainty, sorrow, loss and pain to dance.

Divine Earthly Experience 10: Gratitude for Being Okay

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend."—Melody Beattie 

Hello Fellow Earthlings,

How are you? Well, you must be okay. After all, you are here reading this blog post. I assume you have food, shelter, friends and family. You have a computer or an iPhone on which you are able to read this post. Being okay is certainly something to be grateful for. I sure am. Here's what I wrote on that subject over the past weekend:

As I sit here at the end of Memorial Day Weekend at my family’s lake house in Washington State, I realize I’m okay. Not just okay, really good. If you would have asked me if I’d be okay a year and nine months ago, I would have told you, “Absolutely not!” 

At around eight in the morning, my boyfriend got up, made me a smoothie, kissed my cheek and left. I was still lying lazily in bed, reflecting on the dinners, talks, walks and boat rides my boyfriend Scott, I and another couple all shared. Now, the silence was stifling. The house, once filled with laughter and cooking and snacking and drinks and trips up and down the stairs to fetch bathing suits and suntan lotion, was dead silent save for the hum of the refrigerator and a few bird calls in the distance. I lay there on the bed unable to move. What would I do with my time? The space between community and solitude is always the scariest for me. I have difficulty with that transition. It reminds me of when my husband suddenly left my home for good after sharing a bed with me for the almost 13 years of our marriage. Would I ever see my boyfriend and friends again? Of course I knew I would, but for a few moments I wasn’t sure. After all, who would have thought I’d never sleep with my husband again? Days before he left, we were laughing and humming and picking blackberries that we’d later mix up into delicious muffins. Nothing in life is certain, even the things you think surely are.

Within 10 minutes, I was up, pulling my shorts and t-shirt on and lacing up my Tevas readying myself for a 2-mile walk around the lake. The sun won against the clouds and soon I found myself pulling off my cardigan. I watched yellow finches and swallows swoop between pine branches and two bald eagles rode the thermals high above my head. On my left, where the trees had been clear-cut, I saw volunteer daisies in full bloom. It reminded me of how my own life had been clear-cut. After my husband walked out of my life, the familiar scenery of our lives together had become a wasteland. A bulldozer might as well have just plowed right over our lives while we were having dinner, taking everything with it, because that’s how it felt at the time.

But now, I can say, I’m okay. In fact, I feel so much gratitude. How lucky I am, actually, to have witnessed such tremendous sorrow. I’m not sure I could have felt this at peace and content had I not walked through a very dark valley of pain. When things were going my way and the wind was at my back, I thought life would always be that way. I even took it for granted, not realizing how much I had. But now, walking over the clear-cut of my own life, I stopped to stare at fresh shoots and new blooms, sure signs of new beginnings. I felt happy and content to have this moment to myself to feel this gratitude. 

I still don’t know where I’m going. I’m not so sure of the future anymore. I don’t have a grand plan and perhaps I’m still floating on a vast ocean with no markers. I feel like a huge clump of clay yet to be molded. But I’m okay. I’m good even.

I have this moment. Here in the silence of the dining room, looking out on the early evening light reflecting like shimmering crystals across the lake, while pine tree branches wave like outstretched arms waiting for a hug, I’m happy. Yes, I’m happy. I rest my hand on my cheek, the one my boyfriend kissed this morning. I never thought I’d have a boyfriend again. I thought I’d be married until “death do us part”. You just don’t think about those things. Especially when everything appears to be going along swimmingly. I’m grateful for this man who showed up in my life about six months after my husband left. He’s been loving and kind and gentle and patient. He’s showered me with all the love I had so missed in my marriage. I had somehow convinced myself that all marriages experience a time when affection wanes or even stops all together. That was just how it was. I didn’t know that what I was experiencing in my own marriage was simply not okay. I didn’t know how good it could be. I haven’t witnessed a love like I have now. Maybe it’s not my lover who has allowed me to feel this way, maybe it’s me.

Perhaps I’m ready. Ready to stand up for what I want and need. Ready to be completely loved without holding back. Ready to be full of each moment. Ready to step away from the din of others telling me how it should be and to be grateful for what is.

What is okay in your life? What simple things are you grateful for?

Divine Earthly Experience 3: Connection and Solitude

"Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone. Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music."—Khalil Gibran

Good Evening Fellow Earthlings,

Here's something to think about:

You can't be together until you can be alone.

Yes, I believe that.

When my ex-husband walked out and left our marriage a year and a half ago, I had gotten used to him sleeping in the bed. I had gotten used to our rituals. For over 12 years of marriage, we had slept side by side and from my perspective, we were happy. We laughed, read to each other in bed, snuggled, talked about our dreams and ideas. There was a comfort in having him there. I felt like he was my rock, that we had each other's back, that no matter what happened in our marriage, we'd figure it out. From that foundation, I felt comfortable to be alone. I would go on silent meditation courses and go out to my family's lake house to write for a week by myself. I was comfortable alone because I knew I wasn't completely ALONE. My husband was there, even if we were doing our own things and pursuing our own goals.

But the day he walked out and ripped the carpet out from under our marriage, I thought I was going to die. One day we were picking blackberries down the street and making muffins and singing and enjoying the sun and the next day he was gone. Just GONE. He had an affair and left. That was it. He never returned to our house and bed again.

In the days that followed him leaving, I never felt so alone. I would reach out for my partner in bed at night, half asleep, and realize that there was no partner. My heart would race. I could almost feel it pounding in my throat. I had heard that it was possible to die of a broken heart and I was pretty sure this is what it felt like.

As much as the pain and loneliness was very real, I refused to sleep at family or friends' houses. I wanted to feel myself completely. I didn't want to take prescription medication, drown my sorrows in alcohol, or move to a commune. I wanted to FEEL everything, even if those feelings were unpleasant. Many people reached out to help me at this time, but oddly I wanted to be alone. Writing has ALWAYS been my way of working things out and seeing the bigger picture and I filled many journals during this time. I was 46 when my husband left. I thought I'm getting older. Is this my destiny? To be alone? 

I had gotten used to doing so many things together, but now I was trying to pick up the pieces and do many things by myself. Two months after my husband left, we were scheduled to lead a yoga and writing retreat in Sedona, Arizona. I had thought about canceling it, but friends encouraged me to do it anyway. Two good friends stepped up, came all the way to Arizona and helped me do the retreat. I had never done a retreat without my husband, but it was all women and it ended up being one of the most empowering retreats I have ever been a part of. One woman on the retreat said, "Look at it this way. Now that your husband is gone, you can do and be whoever you want. You are free!" I had never thought about it that way. I was free to define myself anyway I chose to. I was no longer in a partnership. I used the opportunity to develop my healing and intuition at Psychic Awakenings in Seattle and I took a burlesque class that changed my life. It was so incredibly empowering to be with a group of women and create a new identity on stage. All that pent up sexual energy came flying out of me when I danced and so it's not surprising that I got asked out pretty quickly.

I was hesitant to go out with my current boyfriend. I thought I needed more time alone. I believed that I needed to spend a good deal of time with myself first before getting in a partnership again. At the same time, I had felt deprived of affection in my marriage and here was a man that was funny, joyful and ready to shower me with affection—a kind of affection I had never known before. I'm sorry, but I wasn't going to turn THAT down, it's what I wanted more than anything. Some friends cautioned me about going out with another man too soon. I could see their point. After all, it had only been six months and my divorce hadn't yet gone through when I went on that first date. But everything in my body was telling me yes, yes and YES! So I went with it, and it was beautiful and it still  is beautiful almost a year later.

I read somewhere that you can be in a partnership with someone for 20, 30 or 40 years and not have too much growth within the relationship. Couples get comfortable and patterns set in and before you know it, you are moving through the motions with one another. That spark that once ignited the fire between you has sort of dimmed and you have no idea when that happened, but you are comfortable. You know what to expect and there is comfort in THAT. In a way, I believe that is sort of what has happened in America. We were comfortable and perhaps we needed a WAKE UP CALL! We needed an overhaul. We needed to GROW! Trust me, there will be an overhaul and there will be GROWTH.

Being in this new relationship has absolutely accelerated my growth! I feel like I'm on the AUTOBAHN of healing. It helps that I'm with a man who meditates, is an EXCELLENT communicator, is in touch with his feelings and has done plenty of his own healing. I feel like I've jumped through a thousand hoops with this person. We don't let anything fester. Things get resolved quickly and then new things appear to be resolved. So it is with and through this intimate connection that I am healing so many parts of myself. How can we grow if nothing is reflected back to us? How can we grow if there is never any conflict, upheaval or chaos? How can we grow if we never step outside our comfort zone? It is through connection that we can see how much alike we all really are. We ALL have parts of ourselves that need to be healed. Not one of us here is perfect or we wouldn't be on the planet. We are here to connect, love and LEARN. I believe that it is through connection, a deep soul connection, with others who are also willing to grow and learn, that we can evolve. That CONNECTION with others is KEY.

But so is solitude. The two go hand in hand I believe.

But before I talk about that, here's something to ponder: If you decide you don't need a partner, that you prefer to be ALONE or that you are not interested in a relationship because they are too complicated or you can't find the right person or this or that, you may have gotten too comfortable being alone. When you are alone, you get to call all the shots. No one is there to ruffle your feathers or trigger you. You don't need to worry about anything being reflected back to you because you are the only one THERE. It's easy to HIDE OUT in solitude. It's easy to become DISCONNECTED. You may have even convinced yourself that it is safer this way. Being alone is another kind of comfort zone.

I believe there needs to be a balance of coming together on an intimate level and being ALONE. I have made good friends with myself. I enjoy my own company. When I'm alone, all my ideas, thoughts, observations come flooding out. I have time to process what it is like to be in connection with people and particularly with an intimate partner. When I'm in solitude, I can step back and assess  the progress I have made. I can see if I like where I'm standing.

I feel fortunate that I have a good balance between being alone and being with my boyfriend, but I have no idea what the future holds. Do any of us? Do we really know? Even from the deck of our comfort zone, with a glass of wine in hand, enjoying the view, have we really figured it all out? What if you were to lose all of that tomorrow? Would you live any differently now? What would you say to the people in your life? Would you change anything?

I am not claiming to have all the answers. More than ever before, I'm feeling around in the dark and every now and then the light comes through. I'm not sure of anything, but I'm sure of this: a plant can't grow in a box. It needs sunlight, water, good soil and LOVE. It is dependent on the other to LIVE. We are the same. We need each other. We need interactions with each other. Through our deep connections and interactions we realize we are all in this together. If we can just realize this we will realize we are never alone. And once we realize we are never alone, we will be perfectly content to be just that.

Divine Earthly Experience 1: Endings

Good Morning Fellow Earthlings,

I write you from my boyfriend's LOVE SHACK. Today is the second to last day of 2016 and a New Year is ahead of us. I'm letting go of A LOT. How about you? For the past year and a half I haven't written much. To be honest, I spent a fair amount of the last year and a half hunkered down in my Seattle home feeling a bit lost. My ex-husband, the subject of my former book and blog, Lessons from the Monk I Married, had an affair and left our 20-year partnership and 12-year marriage. It was the hardest thing, other than my birth I suppose, that I had to go through. My identity and life as I knew it had been stripped from me. I didn't know who I was or how I fit into the world I had created.

 I felt adrift, clinging to the few solid things in my life (my home, my friends, my job) like pieces of recognizable debris floating past me in a gigantic sea of unknowingness. Even those things that felt solid started to blur as I traversed new territories.

I oscillated between feeling ready to burst forth with a new identity and new life to feeling like hiding under the blankets of my cozy bed, afraid to meet friends and family who were ready with their condolences and offers to help. I was embarrassed that I had wrapped my own identity up so tightly with that of my ex-husband's that I could not even imagine what we could or would be when things fell apart.

But somehow, out of the ashes of a once vibrant, happy, adventurous partnership, with the same ups and downs as any relationship, I arose with a new sense of myself as an individual. I realized I was stronger than I thought I was. Grief took me on a trip through denial to acceptance of my situation.

But I'm not perfect, by any means. I still fall into anger and sorrow over what happened, but with each day that passes, I feel more and more that this was a gift. Indeed, new beginnings are often disguised as painful endings and I was long due for a new beginning, so much so that it took a seismic shift, an earthquake, an eruption, a storm to descend upon my marriage. It had been written well before it had happened. I saw the ending in my dreams.

All the passion that had been pent up in me. All the love that I extended to my partner that was continuously pushed away came pouring out of me wanting to be fully expressed. I took a burlesque class where I became VENUS ON FIRE.

Venus on Fire, Oddfellows Hall, Capital Hill, February 20, 2016

I created on stage everything I felt inside that had somehow been denied. It was strange, but I felt I needed witnesses. I needed to be SEEN for who I was. I was passionate, fiery, angry, sexy, strong, lovable and beautiful. On stage, I emerged out of a shell like the Bottecelli painting The Birth of Venus; I was a docile, pure-white vision of beauty who became a fiery, red Venus, like Pele, Goddess of Volcanoes. I owned my life, direction and sexuality. I could be whoever I wanted to be.

I started to feel so much confidence in myself. I knew what I wanted in life and I believe that's how I attracted my current boyfriend, a very loving, mature, affectionate, passionate man who shined a light on all my broken pieces and reflected so much beauty and love back to me. I also received incredible healings and insights from Psychic Awakenings, a place where I learned to ground and own my space; A place where I learned to trust my intuition and abilities to not only heal myself and gain insight into the person I was becoming, but also where I learned to be an intuit and healer for others. I'm currently in an 11-month Clairvoyant Awareness Program there.

I learned to trust my intuition above all else. When I learned to let go of things not needed in my life, a new life, full of travel, love, happiness and joy entered in. But it didn't just show up until I showed up to do the work. I had to face my pain, sorrow, anger, fear and loss.

So goodbye 2016! It was a year of healing. I will say that as much as I cowered under the blankets of my bed, I also faced life full-on. I moved through grief. I still fall into it from time to time, but I'm ready to come outside. I'm ready to show up in the world and live OUT LOUD. Look out 2017!

How was the ending to your year? Is there anything you are letting go of?