Shapeshifting

When the sun shines

Full pictures here.

Ready

Spring is almost here in Wiltshire and as usual I’m coming back to life. I’m feeling quite proud of how my family and I have made it through this winter without disaster. The vicious viral circle started in November and at least one of us was sick right up until Evie’s little bout of chicken pox last month.

Add in the fact that Charlie had been off work with stress and depression since October.(Sorted)

Add in the fact that I was hormonally challenged like never before.(Mostly sorted)

Add in financial insecurity.(Yeah well...ongoing)

Add in facing a change to our lives (in the shape of Charlie’s new career) that thrilled but terrified me.(Embraced)

Oy.

But we made it in one piece and with relatively little drama.

So here I am and here, of course, are lots of other people too. All around my blog reader I’m seeing women emerge from the winter with fresh plans, fresh thinking. They You are discarding old patterns and embedded stories and I empathise so profoundly that as I read I hear deep, cell-changing harmonies.

The days are longer and I’m falling back into my natural rhythm of waking early, in the light, spending time outside after work and going to bed at A Reasonable Hour. I’m moving back into my flesh and blood life, away from the computer where I hibernate through the darker months, letting it bring me hope and sunshine and company.

In fact, I’ve been reassessing the way I live with the internet. I am, as I’ve often said, a fan. It’s brought me so much that has enriched my life and I hope it will long continue to do so. I love the way it has empowered people, women, to talk about their lives, dreams, plans and to take action, supported by the kindred souls they’ve met online.

But I think I’ve been doing it wrong.

Not long ago I read The Element  (if you haven’t, do) and found that in the last 12 months I’ve rediscovered my element but not my medium. I’ve been thinking that the internet was my medium. Now? Not so much.

There are thousands of women out there who have found a way to come alive online and also make a living out of it. Which is awesome. Because I wanted so badly to be home with my child and my partner and my dogs and the pesky chooks and the land, and because I’ve previously made a living out of print journalism, I thought that somehow blogging could help me do it. While still providing me with an outlet for my inner voice. I thought it was my medium.

Somewhere I lost the balance. Instead of living my life and blogging about it for pleasure, I started to live my life around what I wanted to blog. What would fit the vibe of the blog, what would look lovely, read well, be honest and true but also fit the ‘niche’. I guess eight years in marketing can do that to a woman. Especially a woman with a need to be free from the shackles of a desk job. I was searching for my authentic voice and in doing so, lost it and without authenticity, nothing really ‘sticks’. And on the internet, time slips away in a fashion that is so seductive to an arch-procrastinator like me. Put that all together and you have me, trying and trying to find something that was maybe never there. Trying to force something that was never going to happen and having a great time doing it with lots of fatuous reasons to keep on doing exactly what I was doing – wasting time.

At some point last week, after spending time thinking about who I’d be without my story (haven't read it but the question is a great prompt) and about what rules I’d set on my life without even realising it, I thought, “What would I do if the internet broke? What if there was no blogging? No Twitter?” and immediately I felt something deep inside me say, “Oh thank f*** for that. Can I relax now?” swiftly followed by something on the outside of me responding with, “Wha’…wait…WTF??? I’ve been doing this for you. And now you tell me you don’t like it????”

It’s not that simple of course. I love blogging and will be doing it for a long time to come. I have some little bits and pieces that are perfect for selling online. Being here makes me happy. Blogging about life is brilliant to write and to read. But somewhere along the line I got so fixated on the possibility that the internet could be an escape route for me (to what? See, I didn't think it through.)  that I started to believe it was the only one. Now, as I step back into life, I’m beginning to hear the tired, lonely and frankly pissed off voice that’s been saying,”Step away from the computer some more, there’s something magical out here.”

As is often the way, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. I have many but there are two who seem to be in charge of this semester. First up is Clarissa Pinkola Estés and WWRWTW is the best text book ever. I’ve just finished reading the chapters about relationships and applying her wisdom not only to mine with Charlie, but also to mine with my spirit.

Then along came teacher #2. I wandered into a second hand shop and found, leaping out of the shelf into my hand, Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s The Invitation. I’ll confess, in the past her name has been enough to have me walk away but someone I love and trust, loves and trusts her so I brought it home.

I found that, of the many things it is, for me it’s a workbook for someone looking again for their path. Who thinks they may have taken a wrong turn, even if it was off the right road. It’s far more down-to-earth and real than I’d been expecting. Oriah talks about being exhausted from trying. How she longed to just stop trying to be someone (not someone else, just someone), something, somewhere. That was when I heard the echo of my spirit saying, “Can I relax now?” That was when all the thoughts I’d been having for the past few weeks revealed a pattern.

I’m crap at this anyway. I like to change my blog all the time. I post every day for a fortnight and then nothing for a couple of weeks. I join in with blogging groups and weekly prompts and last about 10 days. Look at all the pro-blogging tips and I do precisely none of them. I’m rubbish at marketing myself and not because I’m not authentic but because I am. Authentic me changes. Authentic me is a shapeshifter and that's wonderful unless you want to build an online persona because, er, where’s the brand consistency? Ha. See? Wrong. Bloomin’. Medium.

So. There. This probably means very little in terms of this blog. I’ll still do random posts and photos but now I won’t beat myself up over it. I'll be here a lot and telling you everything, then I'll be away and not really saying anything at all. I’m going to stop dreaming of being in the Olympics when I’m rubbish at sports. I’m going to be kind to myself and stop worrying about whether my day is a potential blog post or if it fits in with Tambourine Tuesdays or Witty Wednesdays. I’ll be reading them of course for verily, I loveth them. I’m just going to stop trying and resume the search. Maybe backtrack a bit and see what I've dropped along the way. I am, as Lady Dolly of Parton once said, going to find out who I am and do it on purpose. Only this time I’m going to stay way more open to possibility. I’m excited.

Last night I dreamt of comets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dip

The temperature has dropped again but I'm warming up for a fine weekend.

• Idgie and Ninny are coming home tomorrow. They may agree to a brief press conference.
• Today I bought many, many more pebbles. And varnish.
• We have Golden Rod to plant.
• I'll be thinking about this: "What isn't working in your life?" from a post at Pink Coyote and this: "Who would you be without your Story?" from a post at Your Courageous Life because I'm ready to do some more thinking and feeling around those things.
• I'm going to give a very sweet horse some reiki. If he feels like it.
• Charlie is going to continue to completely awesomise ((c) Susannah) his life and therefore, ours.
• I'm going to attempt to write myself a little manifesto.
• I'm volunteering, online, to do some exciting work with the wonderful Dogstar Foundation.
• I'll be watching the first episode of True Blood, Season 2.

Just add nachos and we're good.

The Norman Conquest

Fear, self-doubt, imposter syndrome, inadequacy…you know the sort of thing I’m talking about. The feelings that stop you – me – from following our intuition and our ideas. These feelings, I’ve decided, with some advice and prompting from literary wise women, are the life blood of our inner critic and in order to fight back I have to give him a face and name.

Knowledge is power and now that I know him I can whip out my wild woman superpowers and kick his arse.

He looks like this only more weasley.

 

His name is Norman (apologies to any cool Normans out there but me and your name have some history and it really works for me).

Frankly Norman, you’re a joke.

While I wasn’t changing the locks on old Normy this weekend I was busy thinking about how I could help myself, and maybe others, remember their wildness. These are what I came up with.

They’re prototypes, unvarnished and unpackaged as yet, but they will be available before long. They’re Norman’s kryptonite (although I don’t recall him ever looking good in a leotard and tights).

Happy Monday

x

Shapeshifter

When I decided on the name for this blog I finally felt as if I’d hit upon The One. God knows I’ve had enough blogs over the years but with Shapeshifting I knew I’d pretty much hit the nail on the head. I do what it says on the tin.

At first it was about the way I flit from idea to shiny new idea, place to online place, topic to fascinating topic but – as I’ve become more grounded over the last few months, more confident in maybe holding some space – it’s become more important than that. Far more profound.

I’ve always had a powerful connection with the natural world – I know this because we all have and why would I be different? There have been times in my life when my awareness of the connection has been strong, others when I’ve strayed away from it and suffered as a result.

Aspects of animism play a huge part in my spirituality along with a belief in signs, totems and the lack of any real separation between life forms. Living where I now do, it’s impossible to look away from this; impossible to ignore the fact that we are connected to everything and as much as I’ve paid it lip service in recent years, I think I have been in denial or at least too distracted to take these beliefs further.

Now it’s happening. Now I’ve re-established that communication and it’s very empowering. As a tool for day-to-day, honesty and strength it’s unbeatable. I feel as if I’ve been given a big bag o’superpowers and then told that it was in the back of my wardrobe all along (on the corner of Narnia and 80s Jacket).

Remember WWJD? I know it’s been lampooned by many, hijacked by many more and no, it’s not my path but I can see that as a way to keep yourself aligned with your beliefs and ethics, it’s a good one. That’s how I feel about shapeshifting, that you can connect to what someone/something else would do; what qualities and strengths they would use.

For me it’s about opening up that connection between me and an animal or tree or whatever. It’s not about becoming a fox or a songbird or a willow tree, it’s about recognising that we are separated only while we choose to be. Let’s face it,  life is simpler and more efficient when we stay with our ego and our body. It’s like the difference between being naked and dressed. Most of the time, jeans and a t-shirt are a big plus. But we can dissolve the barriers and tap into the collective strength of Life whenever we like.

I would argue that we do it unwittingly whenever we’re ‘in the zone’ anyway. I’m interested in developing my ability to do it consciously.

That’s what I’m thinking about today - my path and those with whom I share it. How Life is our common language.

Happy Friday.

x

He knows what I'm talking about.

 

 

Wild at heart

I'm revisiting, after a lot of years, Clarissa Pinkola Estés's Women Who Run With The Wolves and oh good grief, this time it's personal.

I only got as far as the third page of the intro before I cried.

Although I did not call her by that name then, my love for the Wild Woman began when I was a little child. I was an aesthete rather than an athlete, and my only wish was to be an ecstatic wanderer. Rather than chairs and tables, I preferred the ground, trees and caves, for in those places I felt I could lean against the cheek of God.

Substitute hedge for cave (we don't have many caves in Wiltshire) and Nature for God (I had no awareness of who or what God was supposed to be until I was way older) and that is me. Finding a personal truth like this is one of the few things that get me instantly doing the squirty tears thing. The last time it happened was during the meditation I did for Susannah's Inner Sage exercise. Similar trigger. Big, spontaneous, snotty tears. Tender, this inner wild woman.

If I'm supposed to be de-cluttering my mind, body and spirit, I need to get away from the computer and outside a lot more.  We are all so stir crazy after the cold, cold winter and so ready to get back into the fresh air.

I have veg beds to plan, flower beds to create for bees and butterflies, chicken coops to build and of course my dogs (and me) to get back into shape. Evie needs more exercise and time spent outside. I'm looking forward to introducing her to my old friend, the Wild Woman and in the meantime, 'ecstatic wanderer'... how purely beautiful is that concept?

I think I'll dwell on that a while.

Spring Festival

Did you have Spring yesterday? We did and it was gorgeous. Cold, sunny, dry, windless. The air smells of green, the pasture fields are filling with lambs and the crop fields are showing shoots.

I walked twice, once with dogs and once with family. I found strange pawprints along a bank of mud in one of the streams - could we have otters?!

Watching our neighbours' chickens, guinea fowl and ducks scratching around their garden reignited my poultry fantasies and now I have three young bantams waiting for me to build them a house so they can move in with us. It helps to have a smallholder in the family.

Charlie has appointments made with business advisors and we're ready to roll with setting up his website, online store and marketing materials for the guided walks he's going to be doing around our home patch and beyond. It's just one of a few pies he has his fingers in but we're very excited about its potential as is everyone who hears about it.

I am finding great pleasure and peace is to be had in places other than my head.

My inspiration for this coming week:

• A post by my dear friend Leonie Wise that she appears to have taken down but I'm hoping will PUT BACK UP AGAIN.(Yes Leoniewise, 'Imagine'. That one. I need it.)
• This Shearwater track in particular. The new album is out this week in the UK.
• Tracie's snow day.
• The Spring Festival, a new year that makes sense to me.
• My sage, muse, ancestor who I clearly see is all and none of those things. She is me and I just need to give her life. And some hair dye.

Happy Monday.

x

This is it. Promise.

I'm not quite done with the set up yet.

I'm still processing and most of it can and should stay in my head but some of it needs to be explained before things change here too.

Also there are things I can talk about now that I couldn't before.

Charlie has been home for nearly five months, I mentioned that. He was off work with stress-related depression. Twenty years ago he signed up to work for an airline as cabin crew because it meant he could go birding (birdwatching) all over the world for free. The job was so-so, he was promoted, conditions changed, blah blah blah and now the job is rubbish. Well-paid rubbish for those who signed contracts decades ago, but rubbish. Unbelievably stressful mentally and physically. Especially physically. Twenty years of jet lag is an evil thing.

But it has brought us a small amount of financial stability. Not a lot, but some. It has allowed me to work part-time through Evie's preschool years. It has allowed us to move here. And it's been living here that has led Charlie to a place where he can no longer spend seven months of the year in a plane or hotel. 'Right there in your back yard' etc etc.

These last few months have been very hard. For Charlie but also for Evie and me. For Evie, life changed enormously, hot on the heels of a house move and temporary reunion with her twin sister. For me, I came here to the place I love most of all - this healing, special place that nourishes me - and then believed we would lose it and everything we'd built.

I work things through inwardly and bide my time. I believe that things work out in the end and that sometimes you just have to put your head down, grit your teeth and get through the bad days but it got harder and harder to do as I sank into my usual winter blues. Yeah, we were The Happy Family.

Charlie sought help and got it and eventually it had an effect. He has risen to the huge challenge of sighting his dream life - the life he both deserves and has to have for his own health - and going after it. He has moved personal mountains and achieved great things. The path to this new life is now clear, if still quite long.

I have fought my own internal battles (always internal with me) and firmly believe it contributed to my weakened immune system and endless sickness and fatigue. But mostly I locked myself into position and tried really, really hard not to move (I am a Taurean after all). Fought with all my might to stay in my comfort zone where I had the freedom to float about a bit ...flitter ...dream ...procrastinate. Lucky me.

Finally now I think I'm learning the meaning of surrender. Give up that comfort zone and something more precious, vital and important will follow. Let go of my utter devotion to independence (that ironically allowed for financial dependence) and acknowledge that you are in nothing alone. You are never and can never be unchanged by the influences at work in the lives of the ones you love.

Am I making even the slightest amount of sense? It doesn't feel as if I am.

Here I am. Looking at a better, brighter, more meaningful future for our family than I imagined in our 3 Year Plan. Or maybe I imagined it but was so deep in the habit of not bringing things to reality that it never occurred to me that it might actually happen. Or that when it started to happen it would be difficult and painful and stressful and oh...by the way, freaking MAGICAL.

Because life is. Magical. And I've learnt that magic is an organic, messy, smelly thing sometimes. And it's viral.

Remember my crappy immune system? Uh huh, couldn't withstand the magic either. But it's changing me beyond my control. I have no say at the moment so I'm just letting the shapeshifting happen. I feel skins shedding and (this may be the week off and the sunshine speaking but I'll go with it) it's kind of exciting.

My name is Jo and I'm a control freak. I like to be in control of my surrender. Heh. And this time I can't be. I just read Ken Robinson's The Element and found that I think I know my element, but not my medium. Maybe I'm being led to that medium now. I hope so.

In the meantime, with regard to my last post, I'm getting started on decluttering myself.

Vegan breakfast.

And today's head-clearing exercise will be following the lead of Rachelle and Tracie and taking a long hard look at my online time. I not only spend too much time faffing about (and not all social networking is faffing, I remain a huge fan) but I also spend to much time comparing myself to others and feeling inadequate or distracted or influenced or wistful.

So I'm off to clear out Google Reader and Twitter. Not because of any disaffection for the people involved, but because if anything I love them a little bit too much.

That's my Friday. Thanks for reading. How's yours?

Context

Seriously. I have things to say here that I really want to get into but stuff keeps happening. And it's good stuff. I feel like I should update so that there is context when I do get down to real writing.

So...the 3YP? Remember that? That was one year ago. 1Y. And then things got given a bit of a shove and we moved here. And then that changed my focus and, to an even greater extent, sharpened Charlie's. And then it got all too much for him and he fell into a familiar swamp of gloom. And he's been off work battling his way out of that swamp for four months. And that has been extremely hard on us all. And it needed to be done.

Here we are. A year into the 3YP and Charlie is about launch his own business(es - yay for portfolio working). We looking at a period of huge, positive change for all of us (after all, I'm still following my own stars) and a need to re-examine the 3YP because it's all happening way more quickly.

This last few months has taught me some things about myself:

• I like money. I thought I didn't but it turns out that I just don't like what it does to some people. Money, I like. I like the security it offers. I even like what it does to some people.
• I am an introvert who needs and craves alone time but I have discovered more validation and joy and inspiration in the friendships I've found this last year, than anywhere else. Suddenly, I love having friends and miss them terribly when they're not around. Who'd've thought it?
• I cannot, to use a phrase my friend Lisa introduced to me, hold a space. I run the moment it feels as if I might be examined. If it feels as if someone could get too close a look at me. See my faults, my flaws, my sheer ineptitude. How much easier it is to flit between Twitter accounts (2), Facebook (false name), blogs (3?), dreams (too numerous to count), jobs, homes, even moods. Just don't try and pin me down because I will scream and wriggle and slip away and get...? Nowhere. Nowhere. Running to stand still, as someone once said.
• I am still fighting what my life has become. I still resent the fact that I cannot sit and work at my computer, or a notebook or a flower bed or a wall that needs painting for longer than about 15 minutes at a time. It drives me INSANE. It takes me a good 20 minutes to get into my groove and work through my personal tendency to flitter away from holding space but add in the rest of my life and...no groove. My life is wonderful, being a parent is wonderful and I need to find a way to have my family, my day to day life, my responsibilities and my 'me time' support each other and not just create stress and struggle. I believe the first step is acceptance and I've never been good at that. Time to try harder. Time to acknowledge that before I had all these things, I didn't care about 'me time'. I wasn't that bothered about doing anything creative. I just liked walking with my dogs and daydreaming. What these things make difficult, they gave me. They are gifts but challenging ones.

I wanted to keep this short and already I'm rambling (dude...I'm HOME ALONE for the first time in months). I'm going to try to do less thought-spilling and more story-telling here. More practical stuff. More...something, less endless examination of my every scintillating thought. Heh.

Back soon.

Happy Tuesday.

x

Still here

So where to start?

Here's the thing: Spring is coming and I'm getting all powered up with thoughts and ideas and about 10 days ago I thought to myself,"Hey, I should blog this on Shapeshifting."

Then we got hit with WinterMalaise.04

Or, more specifically, Evie did. Major growing pains at night - or Restless Leg (thanks for the tip on that Carrie) or something. No sleep for any of us. I'm talking awake until 4am.

In the fleeting moments where I had lucidity and space for thinking about something other than staying awake and/or holding down a job, the things I'd been mentally chewing on went supernova and suddenly I felt as if I had a whole book to write, forget the blog post. But can I get to it? No. Not yet. And I'm having to be alright with that. Maybe even - gasp - mentally edit down that book to a few good blog posts.

So...nothing on Evie's blog because she's been suffering and to add insult to injury I packed her off to nursery today, dressed in red and reciting 'Xin Nian Kuai Le' and it's not new year until NEXT week. Put another fiver in the therapy jar. Last Friday I got pulled aside by the nursery owner because Evie had said a (not very) rude word at Circle Time. This week it'll be because of Parental Cultural Idiocy. Wicked \m/.

I got The Weekly Bean up on Wag Bark Love but my plans for cranking things up there have gone the way of everything else this past week.

And yet, I feel inspired by the lighter afternoons, the snowdrops, the rediscovered life in Charlie's eyes after his personal long, dark Winter and, just yesterday, by standing deep in the magic of a pine wood.

The tall trees all whispering the same language, all singing the same ancestral songs that I could hear only inside my head reminded me that I am small, my life is small, my worries are small. But the strength to be found in connection with the natural world is vast.

And that's a good place to end. I'll pick up right here when I can. So much more to say.

Happy Friday (,Saturday and Sunday)

x