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!

A New Life

Universal Love by Anyes Barber

"I've learned that fear limits you and your vision. It serves as blinders to what may be just a few steps down the road for you. The journey is valuable, but believing in your talents, your abilities, and your self-worth can empower you to walk down an even brighter path. Transforming fear into freedom— how great is that?"—Soledad O'Brien

 Dear fellow Earthlings,

It's been so long. I haven't written since February when I was on Maui. Earth THINGS got in my way of corresponding. It was harder to hear the messages from my heart as I was being tossed and turned in a more active phase of my life. There was so much I wanted to share with you, but I hardly had time to catch my breath. Within the space of 4 months, I attended a week-long shamanic workshop with Hank Wesselman at Breitenbush Hotsprings in Oregon, traveled to Australia down The Great Ocean Road with fellow blogger sisters, slept in the outback under a blanket of stars near Uluru, and toured the North Island of New Zealand immersing myself in Maori culture. It was a whirlwind and I so wanted to write about it while it was happening. There were so many messages to convey, but, instead, I just absorbed it all like a sponge. I promise you, I will share it in my next book Venus on Fire. It is what I'm working on right now.

I touched down on American soil from New Zealand near the end of March on a Friday. I could feel the heaviness and busyness of being back in Seattle, in the city, where everyone had an agenda and things to do and places to go. There was a heaviness in the air. I wondered how far it had spread. Had it infected all of the United States? I wasn't sure. People weren't LISTENING. They weren't dropping down inside to hear. They were just moving. Cars were like ants and everyone was following what the others were doing. No one was questioning this way of life. It felt destructive. The image I had was of rats in a maze running around in circles but not finding any way out. Everyone was bumping into each other and the stress was enormous. Just beyond the maze there was a vast ocean and there were forests with towering trees that stood like ancient grandfathers. They beckoned these rat-like people to step back or step out of the maze. "Step off the path and look up at the moon," a voice seemed to say.

But I didn't do that. By Monday, I was back in the classroom at the community college where I've taught for the past 12 years or so. I went from attending a Maori Hangi (feast) out on the North Island of New Zealand, to teaching small business and ESL classes to 60 students. The transition was jarring. The journey of my spirit, which was deep and expansive, was cut short as I was abruptly transported back to the maze where it seemed I too was running in circles forgetting everything I had learned—forgetting to breath, to stop, to connect, TO SEE.

I bounced through my classes and life like a car that had just gotten a flat on a dirt road. I kept trying to roll that car along, but it was a rough ride. On top of the teaching load, I had to move out of my house of 12 years during finals week. My body gave up. I acquired new illnesses. I went to doctors, counselors, psychics. The message was that I needed to slow down and remove ALL STRESS from my life right away. I was not to put myself in stressful situations until my physical body had healed. Yet, the reality was there. I had to finish teaching and I had to move out. I asked for help and many people came and pitched in. There's a little unfinished business that others are helping out with, but other than that, I'm on to a NEW LIFE. One that better suits my heart and allows me to hear and honor the messages it's been sending out.

Life is not always logical. We don't always go from point A to point B. In fact, I'd be surprised if anyone's life has flowed along in a neat little package with no challenges, woes or battle scars. Of course, the pictures tell a different story. Social Media makes us believe that everyone besides us leads a perfect life with perfect children, spouse, parents, family, etc. In The USA, we are a country of doing and acquiring. There are certain rites of passage that are considered "normal" and if we are in the maze, we'd better do them so that traffic will flow along more smoothly. But the very things we agree to do and believe we SHOULD do, aren't always the things our hearts call us to do. And those rites of passage, as important as they seem, will not SAVE us. We can have a neat little life on the outside, but it's the inside work, the work no one can see, that will make the biggest difference. It's the practice of BE-ING rather than DO-ING. All the messages we need to hear are in the practice of be-ing.

My heart is calling me to take a different path. My heart is calling me to a new life. I'm scared as shit. That's the truth. I've always been the good girl. I've been a good citizen. I've tried to do the right things and follow along in the maze of life, but I'm being called to step off this well-trodden path. I no longer have a home. I left all that I previously knew. It was a dark tunnel getting here, one where I painstakingly sorted through pictures and memorabilia of a life now gone. I sold, donated or tossed most of my belongings. A small pile of things I couldn't part with yet are now in a storage unit. I am FREE.

FREE

I left my home at 9:30am yesterday and got on the 10:30 ferry to Kingston. On the ferry, I sat across from a Native American Artist's painting called The Raven's Journey about a raven who turns into a boy and searches for a box of light. I feel that's my journey too. After disembarking the ferry, I drove on through a dense forest and thick green vegetation to Port Townsend. The Sound opened up on my left as I turned onto Cape George Road. My car was packed with what I needed for a month. I am petsitting and writing for the month of July in a mandala house (round house). It's just me and Indio, the sweet dog I'm taking care of.

My room is the whole upper floor of the mandala house and it sits high up like a tree house. Last night the strawberry full moon shone through the portal window above my bed and filled the entire room. It felt like angels had entered. It lit up all the trees around the house. It was divine.

I'm listening now. I've stepped out of the maze and I'm out with the trees and the moon. My heart is rejoicing. It's showing me things I've overlooked— little things like wild strawberries, fox glove, the smell of pine, a chorus of birds. This is the life my heart wants. Slow, mindful,

FREE

Namaste sweet humans. More soon.....