shapeshifting

That lunar eclipse turned my brain into Spaghetti Junction last night. No sleep for the inspired. But no clear thoughts either. If I was to write a long (too long) post about my interwoven thought processes right now it would include these threads:

• Online business coaching is producing multi-levels of clones and if the only business they have is telling other people how to run their business telling people how to run their business, who is actually doing anything? Making anything? Creating anything? I see the need for business coaching and there is some incredibly inspiring, fresh stuff out there but ohmygod sometimes it's like standing in a hall of mirrors. Of course I'm not an entrepreneur and I don't need to read any of it but when it's good, it's good. I like good now. Good's cool. Cloning isn't.

• Some of us may have no urge to take over the world but we still want to be part of it. We still want to have left some small positive imprint. And look, Bindu has been reading my mind.

• 

• Being a catalyst for positive change among your immediate circle is a wonderful thing. The common ground you probably share will mean your interpretation of something is more likely to spark change than would the words of someone living an entirely different life. Why throw a whole lot of seeds on stoney ground when you can watch them thrive in your own back garden? I have been inspired to make real change by a number of close friends recently. Even though I've known for years that what they say is true, it took their voice and perspective to bring it home to me.

• Building an emotional immune system (my kind of parenting).

• Age ain't nothin' but a number. Voicing my trepidation of turning 50 in two years has made me realise that the number is simply a marker of how long I've been here. It in no way defines who I am while I'm here. I could as easily label myself as having arrived at 09.30 GMT. Who cares right? But I do think that in my mind it signifies an age at which I really should have grown up. And that's what I'm aiming for. Maturity. A smidgeon of wisdom from the many lessons I've lived through. Less manic intensity. Waaaay more serenity (no, not that one). Serenity is what I've always hoped I'd find when I grew up; I guess the unnamed project is a way for me to get there.

• I love the flavour. I'd forgotten just how much. Next year, now I know to pick before they flower, I'll be harvesting my own.

• Tasha Beagle has been rehomed bringing my charges down to three. And, with so much less to do now (there were seven dogs when I started, three have been rehomed and one passed away) I'm only going to visit them once a month. I have been given three Tuesdays a month to do something else. That's good.

• Megan Matthieson

• Restless. I'm restless. I'm getting that 'throw everything up in the air and see where it lands' feeling. I do not know if or when I'll act on that feeling. I do not know what I'd like to see in that new arrangement. I just have a feeling that there is space for something else. Something outward-facing and important to me. Something real and gritty and true.

• It may be wrapped in something imagined and shiny but still true.

• Thursday night is yoga night.

• The project...it is unnamed.

• Awesomised conversation and laughter with Susannah at Cafe Lucca. Also, standing at one of the busiest corners in Bath while she pokes her upper arm and shouts,"I mean, what the F*CK is THIS?" much to the amusement of me and many passers-by. @photobird...keeping it real.(N.B. It's perfectly normal triceps, in case you're concerned.)

• Dreaming of teaching people to fly by firing them out of massive cannons. I tried it, it was AWEsome.

 

 See? Scrambled. Good, but scrambled.

 

x

 

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"

 

I've been re-visiting my Lotta Jansdotter printing and sewing books and remembering why I love her work and style so much. Now I find she just started blogging. This makes me very happy.

Also, as my very short crop begins to grow out and every day is a struggle not to look like Rhys Ifans, I'm loving what she does with her hair. See? All round inspiration.

  

 

 

I said on Twitter yesterday that I felt adrift. And I did. It had been a weird few days what with all the rushing around and the twinniness and then the non-twinniness and the plans being changed around us. On top of that, there was the whole Sick For Three Weeks thing and the starting school and the rumblings at work. And as usual I was perched on the edge, about to fly with new plans and I fell flat on my face.

When I got up I had no idea where I was. Figuratively speaking. I still don't. I feel as if I'm standing to one side of myself watching something happen. This morning I gained some insight.

I see that I'm drawn to different things. Suddenly I want to redo my Google Reader, lose myself in new topics, find new books. When I say new, I mean different to the things I've been focused on these last few months but oh so familiar to the me of autumn last year, and the autumn before that.

I remembered last week, Susannah laughing (in the nicest possible way) at me and my constant blog changes and saying that Shapeshifting is the perfect description of me.

The last few weeks have felt like shapeshifting. As if my bones have stretched and creaked back into other forms and my mind has fallen back into old, familiar pathways. So this morning I found myself thinking that as the seasons change, so do I. But really. Not in a bi-polar, MPD way but in a strange and profound way I seem to have two quite distinct ways of being; both authentically me, but...different. It's the prefect explanation for the craziness I go through at this time and in the early Spring. It also explains the panic I feel build at the end of the summer and winter because on some level I know that if I want to achieve something I need to get it to done. NOW. Before this me disappears for six months.

Or maybe, it occurs to me as I write, I'm just picking up on Evie and Eva's energy. Heh. That would be so typical. And I'm so unskilled at recognising and dealing with that tendency to lose my own boundaries.

Grounding is what I need and I'm building a collection of resources to help me with that. Reiki grounding meditation is a good one. 30 Days of Yoga is another. Dogs, chickens, nature. Loud music that makes my heart sing and my body dance - that works. Time to dust off the hoop. And there's a big old sketch pad that's calling my name.

October is not going to be typical for us but I think I need to find a little time here and there to settle into the me of the darker months and work out how to create some continuity. Ebb and flow.

 

 

My chickens - well, the Threadgoodes anyway - are in moult. Feathers are everywhere, making the garden look as if we've had a fox through it. We haven't. Just Mother Nature doing her thang.

The girls are a bit miserable. The changing season has thrown this at them and it's uncomfortable. There are wing and tail feathers wherever you look unless you're looking at a chicken who isn't called Mr Xanthe.

Soon pin feathers will emerge, pushing through and causing discomfort but ultimately, my girls will be beautiful on the outside again.

They are struggling and I understand. My pin feathers are troubling me too.

A C.S. Lewis quote has been doing the rounds on Twitter this week:

"You don't have a Soul. You are a Soul. You have a body."

Sorry C,  but I disagree with that second bit. It's taken me most of 2010 my life to understand it but finally I do. I am my body, my body is me. And frankly it talks a lot more sense than the flibbertigibbet mind I'm so besotted with.

And that's kind of where Shapeshifting is going.

 

Home

It may be that I'm operating on little sleep and a lot of cold but I think it's more likely that the September/October mood is having its usual effect of making me want to retreat from the world for a while. Sleep for six months. Seriously, if I had a shedload of money I'd take six months off and just stay home until March/April.

However, I have a child to settle into school, new routines to establish, a business to build up, a job to hold down and maybe other developments on the horizon. So withdrawal is not an option (and it probably wouldn't be good for me anyway) but I think I'm going to take a little blogging break here. I'm out of my soul-baring phase at least for the time being. I feel as if it's done me a wonderful amount of good and led me to where I am now - about to take a huge step into the outside world with Black Dog and reiki - and, alongside the work I did with Liz, it's lifted me out of a huge and comfy rut. Hurrah for blogging.

I'm putting things up at Little Black Dog but I think this place will be still for a while.

Thanks for reading. I'm on Facebook and Twitter so stay in touch and don't delete me from your reader just yet.

Jo

x

I'm not paying this space the attention it deserves but I'm busy putting together things for Black Dog and getting myself moving with my sponsored 'more fit, less fat' drive. By the way, if I haven't thanked you already - and even if I have - a HUGE thank you to those who've sponsored me. I'm nearly halfway to my target and that is fantastic.

But yes, attention. Not paid. I'm once more in a position where I have more than one blog because I think Black Dog needs one but I don't want people who only know me through BD to be reading my more bizarre ramblings over here. And I'm not giving up this space because it's my online home and after years of blog-hopping I've finally managed to settle here and I don't want to give it up.

I've been letting thoughts about this drift through my head when there is space and all I could come up with so far is that maybe it could be even more 'Home'. And in my head I'm constantly carrying an image that came to me the other morning while I was thinking of a friend who lives several time zones away, but whose days start similarly to mine. I'd said to her in a an email:

I was up at 5.45 this morning while C and E slept on and it was still a little dark. The neighbours weren't up so it was absolutely silent apart from early birds.
I sorted the dogs and Casey out with food and cuddles, made some redbush and then went upstairs to the other part of the garden to let my chickens out and feed them...clean out their beds etc. It was soooo perfect. And I was thinking,'This baton is going to get passed to Tracie soon and she'll get up early and go through the same rituals (because they are rituals) and then some woman on the west coast will get up early and whisper to her dogs and blow kisses at her chickens...'.

And when I think of this I exhale.

It feels somehow honourable to be part of something simple and ancient. To still have that in our lives (alongside all the technology I also love). To be part of a circle of people stepping up to carry these tasks in loving hands until they get passed to someone else who will pass them on again and so it continues in a hoop of life, round and round the earth.

Some days I dearly wish that my only responsibility was to care for my world; my family, my animals, my self but our society makes that very hard. Too hard for us right now. But maybe I need to meditate on that deep peace and see how I can bring more into our lives. I know much of the anxiety (outward) and depression (inward) that follow me is caused simply by my frustration at not being able to do EVERYTHING because I have to do EVERYTHING. And that's clearly nonsense.

As I work on this body that I've taken for granted, neglected, polluted and held down with too much weight and too little love, I'm having moments of clarity about the way I treat my exterior world the same way.

That's where I am today.

So I completely dropped the ball on the August Break. How predictable was that? If I felt the need to defend myself I'd say I got sick, cos I did but I don't. Heh.

Luckily, although my lungs nearly leapt out of my chest via my incredibly sore throat and I was incapable of speech for several days (yes, thanks for the cheering, @WiltsNature, revenge will be mine)I was able to get stuck into getting copy up on my new site.

I get the feeling that those of you who know me beyond this blog are sick to the back teeth of me and my new sites and I wouldn't blame you for that. It's true, there's been a few of them. But I'm a great believer in trying things out. I believed I didn't like tomatoes until I actually tried one, aged eight, and it taught me a lesson I've never forgotten - how do you know until you try? Lessons Learnt From Vegetables That Are Actually Fruit....hmmm, could be a blog...

I've gone on and on and oooooon about how much life has changed in the last year, how much we've changed, how it wasn't the change we I semi-planned, the stresses it's put on us and the work we've done to grow from the experiences blah blah and indeed...blah. Not to belittle that  process, which has been intense, but I'm done with writing about it. I'm almost done with living it. We're ready for Phase II. Us 2.0 if you will.

The lovely Leonie Wise was at my kitchen table for reals yesterday (sigh) and we talked about Those Days. The Ones With The Fear. The feeling of not being enough or worthy or useful or 'as good as'. All that shit. And how it seems sometimes that they get more intense, more frightening and convincing the closer you get to your truth. I know that's not a new concept but as ever, it feels more real once you've had personal experience.

I have big old butterflies right now about my plans but I also know that on the other side of the wall o'fear is the place I've glimpsed recently. The place that allowed me to visit for long enough to know that it is my element. I want to be back there permanently, professionally, with commitment and plans and love.

With this commitment in mind I've been practicing daily reiki meditations which are powerful things! Not really thinking it through (moi???), I've been doing them just before bed as that's when I tend to have some quiet time. Big mistake, as Julia Roberts once said. Huge. I get so reiki-ed up that I can't sleep until 2 AM. Yeah I'm properly smart, me. Bring me your animals. At 3 in the morning.

Insomnia aside, all is good. There's a bank holiday weekend ahead and then my baby girl gets ready to start school on Thursday. Somewhere between the two, the new site goes public, I send out my press release and start putting the word out.

There go those butterflies...

This is what I was doing yesterday and today. Yes I changed the name - but kept Wag Bark Love for the dog blog because I love it. Part of what I thought about yesterday was realising that I didn't want to limit my reiki practice to dogs. No doubt they'll be my main focus but I needed to open it up. Put more in and yet simplify. So this is the new site so far.

You're wonderful. Thanks so much for taking the time to leave a comment. It very much amuses me that Alisa says that I'll do what I want anyway - she know me a little too well - and Jackie is both the only one who suggests changing it and the only one related to me. See? It's a family..er..quirk, this change thing.

I'm going to keep it. I want to, I love it. And if you'd all said,"Oh god lose it", I'd've been really struggling but would have taken your advice. No really. Because you really know your stuff.

So thanks again. As you were. I heart bloggers.