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

Valerian in known for its calming properties, soothing anxiety and balancing moods. We have a lot of valerian growng in our garden and I can verify that I never feel anything but calm out there. Of course we also regularly have seven Jimley Jackdaws on the bird table, a bunch of silly chickens, sunbathing dogs and a small child showing an unreasonable amount of talent at kicking a ball. What's to worry about?

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"

Chicka meets Idgie and Ninny at their front door.

See the beautiful blue/greens? Chicka likes to perch. They're perchers, this family.

MeiMei - always moving. Little Brown Hen. Sweetie.

The Flag of Chicken Nation from an original design by Evie.

Sweet MeiMei lays blue eggs. This was her first one for us.

Late afternoon. Horses in the field = Nell on a lead. #herder

I look at this and a sob explodes in my heart. Is he not perfect and wild and beautiful still?

Evie shares my love of Pyrex.

This weekend was brought to us by potato printing and branch weaving. Evie wasn't feeling 100% but she managed to bake some Play-Doh and print with some potatoes. I'd hoped she'd do some making of patterns and be all inspired but she's so tired bless her. I ended up doing the carving while she painted and stamped and had way more fun doing the washing up before retiring to the sofa to crash out. The child needs some sleep.

On a mission for supplies, I brought home these branches to try my hand at weaving on them. I particularly love the smaller ones with the beautiful lichen but, as I wove happily away last night, watching the increasingly dark Being Human out of one eye, I found that most of that lichen ended up in my lap. This is how we learn.

It felt good to be making something. Once I've had a practice run I want to weave something beautiful for the wall. Just because.

x

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

Today I am grateful for:

• my camera
• my home
• my Sunshine