shapeshifting

Our very nice, conservation-minded Landlord has it in his head that there are too many jackdaws around this year and they're killing the songbirds. They're not. Anyway, he wants to make a pre-emptive strike and shoot the jackdaws.

my work station

We have jackdaws living in our chimney stack or, as Evie calls it, our jimley. They are The Jimley Jackdaws (and if I ever change my name by deed poll again I'm going to be Jo Jimley-Jackdaw because we all know that would be awesome). I love our jackdaws and do not want their death or the deaths of their subsequently starving chicks literally hanging over our heads.

I quite like it.

(Young jackdaws have pale blue eyes.)

I'm taking some time to be still. To slowly process the stuff that has happened and is happening to us. To find a way forward by listening not pushing. Too tired to push. It's a good practice and it's working. Slowly. We've moved on to one step forward and only one step back at least for a while. I am anxious and stressed and oh jesus h christ I miss Casey so much that it's a constant wound in my heart. But I know I have so much to be grateful for and so little to grumble about really.

To prove it, yesterday I was lovebombed by the sweetest of women.

From @SasLockey came sweet potions for my ritual of bathtime meditation and seeking of guidance. Perfect and so typical of her loving and practical self. Thank you Sas xx

From @mckinleyrodgers came The Wishing Year, a book I read some years ago when life was quite different and now...as soon as I saw it I knew that now is the perfect time for me to read it again. Perfect. Thank you Pen xx

From @creatingwings came Shamanic Reiki, a book that's been sitting in my wishlist for a long time. I read half of it last night and it's with me here now. Awesome, just awesome. And wait...the healing methods they describe...THAT'S WHAT I DO! Perfect. Thank you Meg xx

From @chestnutsfarm came an Amazon gift certificate. She knows I'd've spent cash on petrol or food. She knows that I usually have something bizarre that I really neeeeeeed right now. She knows me better than about anyone. She knows the freedom of choice is gold to me. She knows I now have - delivered today! - a desk easel and a hard copy of Do The Work. Perfect. Thank you Jackie xx

From @postcardsfrom came a tantalising email clue and some words that prove she sees in me what I am almost always afraid to see. Perfect. Thank you Leonie xx

From all my peeps and tweeps came such kind, sweet words for my birthday on Tuesday that I was overwhelmed. In a good way. My heart closed when Casey died. Not permanently but it needed to curl up and heal. You all helped speed that healing a millionfold.

I have some quiet but powerful wishes inside me for this next year. So powerful they're struggling to be contained. I feel, foolishly, that I have to get my ducks (chickens?) in a row before I hit the big Hawaii Five-O in two years. I mean WTF? How did that come around so fast? Still, I always did work well under pressure. I guess it just took more pressure than I could've imagined in order to get me to work. Yup.

Another long weekend for us this week: royal wedding and May bank holiday. The sun is here and I'm wishing for it to stay.

Enjoy yourselves this weekend.

x

This gets better.

Monday I woke up with a migraine. Welcome to my week off. Took a pill. Sometimes the pill just zaps out the migraine and I can function pretty much at full capacity. Sometimes the pill acts almost like an anaesthetic and I'm not really safe to be on my feet. As the pill is a constant, I guess what's happening neurologically in my body must change. Migraine takes many forms even in one person.

So there I am, not yet aware that I'm about to fall into a semi-coma. I have to meet my mother at the local Te3co Superstore (see H for Hell and Holidays), along with Evie and my 5 year old nephew who is lovely but all slugs and snails and hyperactive puppy-dogs' tails. She has some clothing vouchers that she wants Evie to benefit from and frankly, we can't afford to say no. Staying upright and responsible uses all my energy so I'm snappy and impatient. I drive home (I know, I know) and then it hits me full on. I go to bed for one, maybe two hours.

Later I try to download some photos from the weekend - and there are some lovely ones among them - and also, as it happens, the photos I took of Casey on his last day. Just before we headed off to the vet.

Something's wrong with the flash card. I can't copy them off it. I try everything, every method. Even data recovery software. Nope. They're there on the card but I can't have them.

Evie has reacted to the sunscreen she wore on Sunday. She has a livid, itchy eczema all over her face and neck, poor kid.

Charlie's boss comes over for the End of Trial Period Review. When he leaves we're down an income. Face-to-face charity recruitment is a tough game - sales of a worthy product maybe, but a luxury product all the same and this area is just being really hit by the downturn. Targets are nigh on impossible to meet. Charlie tried really hard. They don't care that this could mean we have to move to a one-bedroom flat in a rundown market town. Why should they? Most of the team he trained with have also lost out.

Tuesday means another pill but luckily no coma as I'm working with the Beagles. Since the death of their lady owner/breeder her husband and son (ages, I'd guess, 90 and 60) have soldiered on with my help once a week. They can't manage and so some dogs have been rehomed. They'd said goodbye to sweet Z a couple of weeks ago. Today I go in to find that one of my favourites, lovely T has gone to a new home and the grand old lady Beagle, D, has gone to be reunited with her owner. At 15, she faded out the way Casey did. So we're down to just four Beagles. Four sad Beagles. P, especially, has not recovered from the loss of her human. Today she comes and sits next to me - not on my lap as usual but just next to me. A sad little girl, leaning against me with a sigh. She is still much loved - I think she was a favourite of her owner and so husband and son are particularly attached. I think that T and D leaving has been a bit too much for her. I reiki her while we sit in the sun and she tells me about her sadness.

At home I hear from my sister that the two big employers in our neighbouring town - the two call centres that pretty much saved a generation from disaster when they opened in the late 90s - are closing. We will be flooded with young men and women with young families and mortgages and debt, looking for the few jobs there are available. One of them will be my sister.

Today, after a quick trip to the supermarket brandishing vouchers and reward points, I pick up Evie's best friend and bring them back here. Giggling, shrieking happy girls. I don't care that they're 'making potions in the bath' or destroying some part of the house...just let them be happy. I'll clean up later. While I'm out, the vet calls. Casey's casket has arrived back. Do I want to go and collect it? Well yes, but there's the small matter of having to settle the bill and I have £3 in my bank account. So he's sitting on a  shelf waiting for me to get my working tax credits so that I can pay to have him home with me.

...

Y'know what? I don't want to live my life like this anymore. I'm am so, so literally sick and tired. I'm done with this. I live in a beautiful place and I have so much that I am deeply grateful for but I am guilty of using it as a distraction. It is the opium of this person. I have to break the habit.

...

When I think about how put things right my brain engages and then fails. I know myself to be smart and resourceful and inventive but I got nothing. The very thought of trying again just makes me fall over. Oh I have ideas. Anyone who reads this blog will know I'm always having A Great Idea but now...now I feel paralysed by it all.

And so there is only one thing to do.

Surrender. Give it up. Let go. There is a real sense of things falling away without me even having to actively release them. They are not being 'taken', they are just falling away and I think that might be okay. I understand that it has to happen.

What I need to do is return to the practice I started at the beginning of the year. Healing, meditation, acceptance and space-clearing. Once that space is clear from anxiety and panic - even for a sweet moment of respite - I can hold it open for what comes next. It will come and so will my strength but for now it's just acceptance and practice. Easy to say.

Most of all, knowing that I'm done with the distraction of beauty (not the beauty itself, just the abuse of it), I'm ready to live my life the way I want to. The way I have to.

Part of that is writing about things that matter to me knowing that some readers will a) think I've finally snapped or b) laugh or c) both the above. But I'm done caring about other people more than I care about me. So I'm going to tell you that on Tuesday night I tuned into a drum and journeyed to meet my spirit animal. She's a young wolf and her name, she tells me, is Divna. We met some time back. I thought maybe her name was Irish but looking it up I find it's Hungarian for beautiful. She's certainly that and she's certainly a European wolf. This night I wait for some heavy answer to my questions but she starts dancing. And it's funny. She looks ridiculous and she's doing it on purpose. She's telling me to laugh. I see her dancing painted in broad strokes with energy shining from it

....

I've been trying, in snatched moments to return to Kathleen Dean Moore's Wild Comfort. I read half of it a month or more ago and now I'm back. On Monday I picked it up and randomly opened a page. Now, when I do this I don't usually get some profound sign, I get an advert for dentures or double-glazing. Sorry but it's true. I don't generally have good random-page-mojo but I did this day. This is what I read:

When you die, it's done, the chance is gone. So when you live? When you live, make it all. Don't wait for the rain to stop. Climb out of your tent with your mind engaged and your senses ablaze and let the rain pour into you. Remember: you are not who you think you are. You are what you do. Be the kindness of soft rain. Be the beauty of light behind a tall fir. Be gratitude. Be gladness.

Ever since, like a mantra, I hear, "You are not who you think you are. You are not who you think you are. You are not who you think you are..." and I may well still be curled up in my tent, but I'm looking out on a whole new landscape.

Thank you all for your comments and emails about Casey - they meant a lot. I know many of you have been where I was last Friday and the rest of you are an empathetic, lovely bunch so I was in safe hands.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about what gets us through the bad days. Online and nonline (just made that up. When you see it all over the place by next week...it started here m'kay?) friends play a huge part, that's for sure.  And all my 'funny little ways' that I've - it suddenly became crystal clear - rarely taken seriously, actually do lift me upwards and onwards.

The little steps, the moments of lovely, the act of creating something however small, temporary or even imagined...they really do work. The rituals I've used to work with my own beliefs and understanding of life...they mean something. Something real. The healing energy? It actually heals.

(The day of Casey's death, Evie said to me,"Mum? What you need is a fire. Or even a candle. And you get really close and you tell it all the things you want to say to Casey okay? It really works." Now, a) lighting a candle is something I would do anyway for a travelling spirit and b) WHAT??? Where the heck..? Talk about My Little Shaman. Chip off the adoptive block or what? I'm so proud.)

I think I'm going to focus more on these things here. The things that help me, heal me and move me through the hard places. I'm not going to say 'dark places' because dark is a good place to be sometimes. Powerful.

Anyway...I want to put those things here. Along with random chicken posts of course. Chicken medicine is some gooood shit. Especially from random chickens.

Random Ninny does her best Diana Ross.

"You Can't Hurry l'Oeuf"

Thank you all for diving in on my rant yesterday; it seems I am not alone! I do hope I didn't come across as ungrateful. I'm profoundly aware of how good a life I have with my home, my family (need I add that I include 2 and 4-legged members?), my life in nature that nourishes me. I love and deeply appreciate their presence in my life.

There is a part of me that is unfulfilled and becoming increasingly stroppy about it. I swing between feeling guilty for wanting (even) more and feeling guilty for feeling guilty for wanting (even) more. Why shouldn't I want more? Because I have so much already. But why shouldn't I want more? Because...yadda yadda yadda. Dizzy.

Yesterday afternoon we got some sunshine and I went out with Nell and Jackson. We walked down a long narrow-ish field towards the Withy Bed, the old local name for the willow copse. In the field above us, farmers were turning over the earth and spreading manure, a practice that always brings in the birds. Where there are small birds there are bigger birds and when there are thermals, those bigger birds will be buzzards.

This picture of a Chalfield buzzard (maybe even one of those I saw yesterday) was taken by Charlie.

I once thought I'd seen five together, usually the most would be three at once, but yesterday there were nine. NINE. Possibly even ten. All soaring on the warm air in a bright blue sky, distinctive calls ringing across the fields. Pure magic.

We walked back along towards home and as I got to the gate - some distance from where I'd stood and watched the birds - I noticed one had followed us. I stood and looked up as it came closer and closer before circling a while over my head. It clearly took a good long look and then flew off. I've never been so close to one of these beautiful birds before.

Looking up the symbolism of the buzzard it became clear that there is a difference between UK and US terminology. In the US a buzzard is usually included with vultures; here it's a hawk. So I focussed on hawks and found this:

Intuitive ability to discern the message and seek the truth is one of Hawk’s powers that he imparts to humans. He teaches people to provide for self and family. Another lesson is to be observant and pay attention to what might be overlooked, possibly a talent unused, a blessing for which gratitude hasn’t been given or a message from spirit. He teaches people they must be awake and aware. Hawk’s medicine helps people to know how to interpret messages from spirit by bestowing upon them a higher perspective so they can see details of the bigger picture. He cautions humans to times when not to take action because they don’t have all of the information we need yet.

I haven't blogged in two weeks. February is racing through with me gasping for breath behind it!

My online time has been limited to the stuff I can do with one eye on the screen and one on something else. Twitter and Pinterest are my bestest of friends right now and oh, how I love them.

My etsy orders are all up to date at last and I've listed some new little plates. I have a new idea for some special magic to add to the store but I think I have to wait until March before I'll have time to make it real. I've also learnt...have things ready before you list them.

I've also found that Reiki and I are supposed to work together for people as well as animals. In my spare minutes I've been playing with my 'front page' to reflect this change. Early days yet but I want to add much more as time goes on. The first step is to get out there and do it. Cash flow dictates my timetable with bigger projects so I have a portable couch and my insurance to cover before I'm really out there, but this will happen.

My extra day's work a week - with the Beagles of Lurve - is wonderful. It feels good to be outside doing the kennel work, keeping my body working hard while my brain takes the chance to get stuff in order. The second half of my time there is spent bathing and grooming and yes, okay, cuddling these lovely dogs. I finish, I run a couple of errands and then it's Evie's home time. The change in days I work at the office has thrown us all a bit and the question,"Wait...what day is it?" is bounced around the desks while we adjust. New rhythm is settling in though.

Through these minor changes Evie has been my priority. She's suddenly grown up a lot and with that development have come big questions about China and her birth family. Her understanding of her story has deepened - she's been told an age appropriate version of it since before she could talk -and with it has come a wave of grief. I'm not going to write about her feelings here but I can tell you mine were shaken when - as she sobbed and I rocked her to an "it's okay darling, it's okay" mamamantra - she looked at me and wailed,"But it's NOT okay Mum...its NOT okay." And no, it's not. So she reminded me of the underlying truth of our family, easily forgotten during these early innocent years, that adoption is built on profound loss. Adoption following (possibly enforced) abandonment...oy. Time for me to dust off my adoptive parent certificate (oh if only) and remember the full width of this path that we've chosen (and that she hasn't). I know our bond is strong and I think we've built strong, loving foundations around that original loss. I have healing tools that I can add to the mix and this, here in our own home, will be where they will be called on most.

Charlie spent a few days in Spain this month on a blogging gig that - I could feel his pain - also involved a large amount of birding. and just as his feet hit the ground he's off next week for two days training on a new fundraising job for the RSPB. It's half-term week so Evie has no school, Auntie has a new full-time job, Nana is not too well and already booked up with the cousins and we've been caught on the hop a bit. I foresee a bit of work-experience in charity marketing for a certain five year old. Thank goodness for an old-hippy-workplace.

So. Yes. Life! I feel as if I've been shifted into second gear after months of grinding along in first. I've found endless strength and support in Reiki, journey work, nature, family and friends to whom I owe many emails. I have so much that is precious in my life and looking after those things takes time and energy that sometimes perhaps I'd rather spend on something more about me-me-me and my personal path. Yes, life could be easier but it would be infinitely poorer too. These are the lessons for an introvert.

Are you as ready for Spring as I am?

x

This week I guest-posted over at Susannah's blog. I was honoured to spend time there for the day and adored the polaroid she chose to sit alongside my words and picture - how perfect was that?

A few people got in touch to say they'd love a copy of the licence in my story and so I'm working on getting a download ready to put on here, then you can help yourselves.

There's lots going on this week: old job, new new job, old new job that is stalling, new etsy store, new projects to think about. On a bad day it feels a bit like a ticking bomb but on the good days - and there are more and more of them - it feels like the return of the sun. One more month and Spring comes back to this part of the world.

Out walking, I can feel the plants beginning to stretch and yawn. Birds are starting to busy themselves in readiness for new families. Even domestic birds. Having been responsible for the ruthless bullying of Mr Xanthe when he arrived as a young bird, Idgie Threadgoode has decided that now he's all growed-up, he's actually rather handsome. I have to agree; he has a fabulous tail and long, silky feathers that fall from his head like a mane. So Mr X and Idgie spend all their time together. They dust bath together, they roost snugged up together at night, they feed together. Meanwhile poor Ninny is spending an increasing amount of time wandering around the garden on her own. The three of them still spend most of the day together but the dynamic has really changed. I need to take some photographs.

In the meantime, to show I really am thinking about it, my doodlings:

Well it's 11 months since I wrote this post and finally, with pounding heart and more adrenalin than can be healthy, I am ready to launch the Shapeshifting etsy store.

It's a small affair to start with but has huge significance in my life and I believe that with this first step taken, I'll be walking this path more often during the coming year.

* do ya see what I did there?

Before

99p thrift find

After

Jackdaw, wolf, horse, chickens, woodpecker, owl, jay, my bbc coven, badger.

Magic.

I am the daughter and grand-daughter of cynical engineers. I like to see how things work before I believe that they do and even then I'll observe with a raised eyebrow while they run through their moves. Yet I believe in things I cannot see.

One of those things is Reiki. Reiki is both a system and a practice; here I'm talking about the system. I first learnt Reiki in 1998, moving on to level 2 in 2000. My teacher was and is a lovely woman who had come to Reiki via mediumship and some fairly random new age stuff, so that flavoured my lessons. As I've said before, I was deep into new age stuff myself during the 80s. I did birth charts, wore crystals, tried astral travel, read the tarot (I know some of these things are ancient but they got a new age makeover in the 80s). Most of all I read books on shamanism and the medicine wheel. Yeah, that was kind of where I was at, over here in semi-rural England during the Thatcher years. Heh. I smudged my living space while wearing f*** off great big shoulder pads.

I'd moved on and away in my spiritual thinking by the time I learnt Reiki. And now, over a decade on, I'm even further away. But Reiki remains (as does my love of smudging).

As I've written here, I've felt a strong call back to practice and yet I've dithered. And the reason for that, if I'm honest, is my bullshit-o-meter goes doolally over this stuff. I've seen and read so much nonsense, tasted so much snake oil in my time that I find it very hard to be a believer. Over the last 12 years Reiki has had some hideous old rubbish written about it and has also been infiltrated by 'undesirable' (to me) things. There's angel Reiki, unicorn Reiki, dolphin Reiki, Reiki with crystals, Reiki with ketchup...all sorts of blah. It was the proliferation of these schools that sent me away from my practice.

And then came the beginning of something else. Something that claimed to be a look at the real history of Reiki. Eventually, I looked and I liked it. This was Reiki as a personal practice. A path to awareness and perspective and yes, if you should so choose, to helping others but that is secondary. It's no-frills Reiki. It's not about ancient Tibetan masters, it's about a practice developed in the last century, in Japan, by a wise, compassionate and knowledgeable man.

There are fine books written on this and I'm not going to try to outline the history here. Suffice to say, there are no unicorns involved.

So, there I am - I'm practicing again and feeling good but still with the doubts because - see my opening statement - I can't make sense out of this. I don't need scientific proof but I do need to see that there is a possibility that Reiki is explicable in terms that humans can grasp. And if I'm thinking of offering Reiki to the public, I need to believe it or I'm just flogging more snake oil.

And then I find myself out in nature maybe even more than usual. A lot on my mind and a need for space and air and life. And I find myself thinking in my native vocabulary. I feel the life energy (Reiki roughly translates as universal life energy) and I know it's real. I wonder how, as humans, we can access this energy and communicate it and d'oh...that would be the system of Reiki. (I'm not always as bright as I like to think I am.)

I guess I learnt about energy work in a language that wasn't mine. Like my mother who did her early school years in Welsh despite being an English-speaking English girl. When she moved back to England her knowledge came with her in English. My awareness and knowledge of energy work is in my language, not Japanese. It's Reiki but it's not called that in my head and I have no name for what it is besides 'energy work'.

Having got that far, I saw what it is. What it does. It's probably overly simplified, very childlike and 'bad science' but this is my take:

• We are all joined. We are all part of the same web/wheel/matrix/entity. There is no real separation.
• Take a pinch of quantum entanglement.
• Add a tsp of Schrodinger's cat.
• This leads me to believe that we can influence life with our presence. That we do influence life with our presence. But it's more than presence, it's attention. It's thought. Intention.
• So by placing our attention in a certain part of the wheel of life, we change it. We do it every day without awareness. If we were constantly aware we'd go insane at the infinite number of interactions going on but if we choose to, we can train ourselves to be more aware of these changes, effects and movements. This 'energy'. We can fine tune our awareness through practice. Think tai chi, chi gung, yoga, shamanism, ahem...the personal practice of Reiki. Many other forms of energy work.
• Having developed a sense of that energy we can go on to work with it. Not manipulate it as such - I know from personal experience that if you focus on a specific desired outcome it doesn't work. Healing is not curing. This is not magic. We are not that powerful. We are not David Blaine ("time-travelling DEMON!").
• We just need to participate.

Participation is something I learned from the horses I've worked with: sometimes you just need to listen and witness a story to become part of it, and energy work allows you to become an active part. And this happens outside time and space. For example, I'm increasingly aware that on another plane, lit by the glow of my laptop screen, I sit in a circle of amazing women all over the world whose stories I witness and whose friendship is an active part of mine.

If we simply sit; if we listen or meditate or pray or just feel positive or focus on love, we change life. What happens may not be obviously 'The Best Thing' but it will be positive and it will come from love.

Yes, anyone can do it. You don't need a certificate or a title. Some people may naturally be able to tune into this level, others may need practice. I believe that I fall into both those categories. I felt it all my life but I was clumsy and tongue-tied and inexperienced and oh-so-easily distracted.

I want to work with energy a lot. I want to become fluent; return to my mother tongue. I want my life to be full of this energy: rich and colourful and above all, flowing. I want to make a difference in my life and in the lives of other human and non-human people.

My bullshit-o-meter is at rest. This I can fully invest in. This I can commit to and practice and believe in and love and know.