Beginning to Re-Story Wisdom as She Beckons...

Words may ultimately fail me in honoring what I’m receiving in this new-old breathwork practice. I know I want to name some things ‘aloud,’ to honor the openings, to mark some of the changes, and yet I’m also aware that whatever I begin to write feels lacking, insufficient. Tough for a writer to admit, but there you have it. As with most new spiritual practices that ‘find me,’ that I begin to learn, the upswing of them is impressive within me, my emotional weather. No different here. Day Intro and Day 1 had their own newness, intensities, which I was able to name in some detail. Day 2 was also physically intense, though I did not journal immediately afterward. I had to hold a coffee-club with some circle friends shortly after practice. Way opened to talk about it a little with the friend who introduced me to this practice, but I didn’t journal about the insight(s) that arrived. These musings can now include Days 3&4. In general, I’m deeply appreciating the rebalancing of my over-we...

So I’ve signed up for the 5-Day Business Challenge of Breathwork with an Amy Kuretsky , located in Minneapolis MN and colleague of my friend Libby Smith . Not sure why all I signed up, but at the very least, I found way into a 12-minute breathwork practice ‘on my own,’ with her introductory video. I have access to Spotify playlists within which I can also do this practice. I could have done these things before signing up, of course. Libby shares the playlists and it’s not as if I don’t know how to do the practice. Funny what will get me to do something for myself, and what won’t for a long time…until it’s finally time. This morning seemed a restless one, with just enough curiosity about the restlessness to explore a little deeper. I was able to center in my body, my sensations, in a way my mind had not been allowing me to land. Blessed be. I’m irritated and a little angry with the word eldering . Particularly as a woman I’d used that word with, for, some at her insistence in her work,...

  My newborn self. While I was finally drawn into this guided journey, there was once again resistance to sitting with my newborn self, the image and reality of me as a newborn. The pain I’ve always known then is softer now, less shrill in my awareness, but I was still hesitant to return. Or to even imagine I could know how to return to these earliest years. I was born to a mother suffering quietly in a foreign country (to her). She had married my father nearly seven years before, early 1960’s, and he became a doctor for the Peace Corps, to settle his draft status. With a newborn in tow–my sister–they landed in Tegucigalpa Honduras for two years of service. I arrived about three months before we all returned to the States.  However one might understand these things, I arrived as the old-soul, deep-feeling being I am, immersed in her suffering. I took on her pain, as any sponge would. Sitting in the flow of words for this guided journey, I became aware of this pattern in me, r...

  A strand of words has been piecing itself together while I slept.  There’s something here within me about the weight of the archetypal , which can be borne by leaders, by elders in our lives. Until it is time to release it, let it disperse. One feels a deep sense of loss then, but also a grounding, a return to the ordinary sacred simmering always amidst the Big Sacred we may crave. In one sense, it’s not fair to make another carry that weight for us. In another sense, we are not aware we’ve asked this of them until they release it or it disperses amidst circumstance. I do claim my responsibility in this dance of projection-and-return even as I have come to understand over decades that this is how I grow , learn, mature . It is what it is. This pattern played out in my bodysense yesterday, as two elders-friends in my life face their growing edges in rupture, together yet differentiating too. I didn’t realize it amidst the overwhelming sense of sadness, but I now see I’ve pr...

Three “forces of nature” have come into my life, beginning to plant seeds of co-emergent circle-community formation/work/play that I’ve yearned for for years . Robbie, DeJaNay (pronounced DEH-ja-nay), Cynthia and I coined ourselves the Faithful Four , which now seems to be becoming the Faithful For…? We find ourselves gathering on the first Thursdays of the month for circle, for a time/space for women-healing-women . Our last two circles have extended invitations to other women in our lives, some of whom are beginning to show up. We’re living into that mantra of sacred bewilderment: Show up. Don’t know why. Do your best. DeJaNay's tagline is Watch Us Grow , which fits here too. This picture includes one of those showing up, Rene, alongside Robbie, (myself), DeJaNay, and Cynthia.   [Context: A dear friend asked some questions today that instigate this writing… Not only does it feel like a timely-sacred musing, to listen into the quiet, but a couple of the questions intrigued me. ...

  Unexpectedly, I hosted my first Flow Game last night.  I say ‘unexpectedly’ because the circle that was gathering had already begun to form in the fall. Three ‘forces of nature’ women and I had been meeting since September, to get to know one another, to listen as women of prayer for what Spirit might invite in our midst. [To be transparent, the three of them are much more comfortable with the language ‘women of prayer’ than I am. I am a woman of prayer, but I’m a shy Quaker-Presbyterian about it. I don’t think of myself out loud that way. If I were to claim scriptural warrant, I would point to the ‘let your prayer happen in the closeness of your closet, not out in the street’ verse.] December 1st was our first ‘official’ women-healing-women circle, a gathering to which friends and family would be invited as well. The first Thursday of the month is our current anticipation of gathering times, so February 2nd will be the next one. So this was already a circle-in-formation, n...