Shapeshifting

The Threadgoodes

Idgie

and

 
Ninny

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.

 

 

All flowers...

This was on repeat play for me last night as I lay in bed wide awake. Two of the greatest voices ever: Jeff Buckley and Elizabeth Fraser.  Love Thursday takes musical shape.

A tale of two chickies

I went to visit the chooks today. There are four sisters and because four sounds a lot and I don't want to leave one alone, we're going to have two. These two (*bites fist in excitement*).

It's not a great picture I'll grant you but don't fret, there'll be many more once they come home.

Next favourite bit...the name game. I'm going to try to resist Comedy Name Syndrome but I'm not wanting traditional henny names either. Feel free to leave polite suggestions. I'm liking Idgy but Ruth doesn't seem right for a chook. Hmmmmm...

I also collected the two tier rabbit hutch from a Freecycler today. It needs a little patching up but I think it might well do as a fairly long term option for them. They can have a run attached to it and also free range when we're home.

I think they'll be happy to be here and we'll certainly be happy to have them.

Not so much bull

Sweet Megg pointed me towards Omega horoscopes and look what I found:

Taurus
Nearly every Taurus I know is struggling with their career. This seems to be a life theme of your sign. Let's pretend that has something to do with all the activity in Aquarius, your career house. Going back quite a long way—five years, 10 years, even 15 years, depending on how you count—there's been constant change, movement, and an odd sense of insecurity about what you want to do, or what you 'should be doing'. You've had plenty of ideas along the way, some of them excellent, but less in the way of traction or stability. Perhaps you know what you want, not how to make it work for you. Remember that most of our experiences train us to compromise passion and curiosity, or to expect certainty and incontrovertible correctness of the plan. Sure, that happens. More often, we find ourselves involved with events, uncertain where they will lead. Through many such experiments, we can arrive at an interesting place. What you have going on is subtler than either of those usual paths. At the moment, you have a rare perspective (think of it as visual, from a high place) that you didn't have before. Use it to observe the ways you have been conditioned to not know what you want; to want what others want for you; and to doubt your own ideals, for the sake of others. What would your life be like if you moved all that out of the way?

 Okay,  so who exactly is Eric Francis (besides being a man with an awesome smile!) and how is he managing to read my thoughts even better than I do?

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?