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.)

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'm finding so much inspiration online. Thanks to lovely links posted by friends and of course, Pinterest, I'm adding fresh faces to my Google Reader and so enjoying what they share.

Here are just four:

The extraordinarily creative Jennlui at A Trinket Treasury.

Margaret's beautiful creations at Resurrection Fern.

Jude makes true magic at Spirit Cloth. I am mesmerised in the very best way.

Everything Melissa touches turns lovely at Tiny Happy.

Have you found any new places to enjoy lately?

x

I'm in the habit of listening to things as I fall asleep at night. To simply relax and drift off I have the EquiSync Enlightenment. For Reiki I use Reiki Evolution meditations for self-treatment or distant healing (it's not necessary to have guidance but I find it helps me focus sometimes), and for just moving stuff out of a rut I vibe out to Fabeku's Remembering Through Resonance, an old favourite of mine.

So last night I'm away with the Singing Bowls of Awesome and easing myself out of the 'Oh god tomorrow's Monday what should I have got ready that I didn't get ready will I have time to do it in the morning crap I don't have any petrol in the car there's only a fiver in my account...' spiral. Yeah, that's the one. You know it?

I thought, for the gzillionth time,"What would I do if I really didn't have to worry about money? If I was so rich I could do whatever I wanted?" and I'll admit, I expected the same old mix of 'Save The World' and 'F*** Knows' to show up. But it didn't. Instead I started to see a huge wooden building in my garden - I say huge, I mean bigger than our little greenhouse which is titchy. It was white inside and out, big windows, full of light. Inside there was workspace to follow whatever creative whim came into my head: paint, pencil, crafting, words, animation, sewing... Whatever I felt like trying out, I could just move around this studio and find a space to do it. The endless ideas I have flowing through my head would not end up in the universal recycling bin but might actually get tried even if they were never finished. The studio was messy but not cluttered. Organised and yet not. The sun was shining and the dogs were asleep on rag rugs, soaking up the warmth. Clearest of all was the space in my head - there was an absence of pressure. Pressure to pay the rent, feed us, settle the water bill, tax the car, get Jackson's teeth checked, stay in credit, buy school shoes for Evie...money money money. Pressure. Have I mentioned my migraines?

The pressure wasn't there. There was light. And it was light. And in it I could so so many things.

So my next thought was,"I'm never going to have that kind of money." And no, let's be honest, I'm not. For all I believe in magic, I also believe that I'm never going to be a millionaire. Any more than I'm going to be a dancer on a  Madonna tour or set up an elephant sanctuary or adopt from China again. Ain't gonna happen.

And my next thought was,"What if you could be self-supporting doing that work? What if, you didn't have some mysterious external income allowing you that space BUT, it did pay for itself and the rest so that the pressure was removed another way. That, my friend, is possible. A way off...but possible. Kinda."

And that vision, as the singing bowls sang, was etched on my heart.

No doubt as the fairy dust settles I'll settle too. Somewhere in the middle with my brain pointing out that artists probably have more financial pressure to deal with than your average desk jockey. That in the absence of a lottery win I would need to have A Business. That I'm almost 48 with a five year old child and three part-time jobs.

Still - as I look forward to having five days at home in which to finish off outstanding etsy orders and list new bits and organise myself -I'm sensing that some of that vision is closer than I'd thought.

Here's to daydreams and singing bowls.

x

Have I mentioned my Pinterest addiction today?

*Name the film and character and I'll love you forever.

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.

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be” ~ Lao Tzu

Today I am grateful for:

• My family. Near and far, sane and crazy, four and two-legged.
• Alisa.
• Zolmitriptan.

A brief Facebook conversation about crows, other corvidae and the messages we can take from them if we’re so inclined got me thinking:

a) if a bird’s in flight, I can’t tell if I’m looking at a crow, a rook or a jackdaw. So, living as I do with a top birder, I got some ID lessons and now I can.

b) there are people who read my blog who must think I am insane with my ‘messages’ from Nature and my symbolism and totems and the like.

c) I’m not.

Some people use scriptures, others use scientific research, there are many ways and many guides. I use Nature to examine my life and to access my intuition and my truth. It’s my way in, as it has been for humans since the beginning. Words so often fail me but life does not and yes, for me there is magic in it.

Walking this weekend through a favourite oak avenue turned golden, with bright autumn sunshine lighting a clear blue sky, I turned into the warmth, closed my eyes and just stood. All I could hear was birdsong and the dogs snuffling in leaves and the life, the sheer whoosh of LIFE around me was so pure I felt as if my entire energetic system had been cleansed in a split second. Walking on, eventually, I thought about how incredible it would be to be able to communicate that feeling, to pass it on. But how to without losing the essence? Without passing on nothing more than a black and white photocopy.

I remembered my basic physics: energy does not end, it converts. So while we don’t have the physical, mental or spiritual ability to hold and share life in a form as pure as I’d just experienced, we are superb converters. We each convert Life/Nature according to our own nature and in doing so become even more a part of it.

We take it to another place and, one hopes, create something special with it. We share that energy through art, words, music, food, movement, love, mathematical solutions and more. Our creativity is our expression of that pure, perfect life energy and it is irresistible. It must flow through us; outwards and onwards in its endless cycle.

When it doesn’t we become sick and troubled. Our lives become sick and troubled. Life itself becomes sick and troubled. For me, energy healing is just that: energy that heals energy. It’s an extra whoosh of life to help to unblock our true expression of our Selves.

I’d been thinking about Reiki and how perhaps it isn’t what I work with but these thoughts on energy and how it moves through us prompted me to see that it’s my interpretation of Reiki that’s maybe been ‘out’. I’ve always visualised it as somehow coming from ‘above’. Believed, like some old Flat Earther missing the (now) obvious, that The Universe is up in the sky. I tuned in and felt the strength of energy coming up through my feet and from the living things all around me and thought, “Well that can’t be Reiki…it’s got mud on it.” Then I gave myself a good slap on the head and realised how dim I was being. But I’m still uncomfortable using the word Reiki. It’s Japanese and specific and belongs to a culture that I do not wish to misappropriate. I’m as Anglo-Celtic as they come, my traditions are different, my culture – spiritual and otherwise – is different. We talk of the same things but in different languages. This is something I need to think about more.

This much I do know: with each step in the process of examination I move towards understanding and in that, I find my own path. I see that my path runs through me. I can see, on the horizon, the me who is unique and authentic and able to express herself, to convert life’s energy, in her own way without apology or fear.

Sometimes the Universe puts up signposts.

During a recent trip to our local town of Bradford-on-Avon I picked up a pile of leaflets from some of the people advertising therapies in the area. B-on-A is a bit of a hub for That Kind Of Thing; one of the reasons I love it.

One leaflet was for a woman who offers hypnotism and various other things, including creative kinesiology. It got left in a pile on the coffee table. Somehow, that particular leaflet ended up on top of another pile in Charlie's office and he thought it was me dropping a not too subtle hint, because we'd been talking about him getting hypnotism to help with the vestiges of a stammer he has from his schooldays (it wasn't). So he called and made an appointment.

And it was astounding. Not just because a day later, he didn't stammer once during the type of phone call that would usually have found him completely locked on a consonant, but because it also opened up memories that his mind thought it had forgotten. His body hadn't.

So I decided the time was right for me to address my emotional eating issues before my poor old bones crumpled under the 30 pounds of extra weight I'm carrying. Or my body became so toxic that it fell into serious illness. Or my exhaustion got so extreme it tipped into CFS or something. Or my head exploded. I made the appointment.

The first one is 90 minutes - 30 minutes consultation over a long questionnaire you've already filled in and 60 minutes of treatment. I'd thought hypno was the way we'd go but the kinesiology just took off so we went with it.

In brief, my energy, immune system and strength/resources are all running at about 50%. I thought this was great - way better than I'd imagined - LK did not. She was pretty horrified.

She was more horrified by my confession that I don't really drink water. And I don't get thirsty. She muscle-tested me with water (I held a glass of water in my right hand, against my stomach, while she tested my resistance with my left arm) and - as my arm repeatedly flopped like a limp lettuce - said,"That? Is not right."

My body rejected the water as an unknown substance. Which meant something on a meridian somewhere was broken. She worked on a couple of points (think acupressure) and tested me again. Loving that water. Arm as strong as an ox.

She muscle-tested me while asking my body how much water it needs a day and it said 2.1 litres. So that's what I'm drinking. Minimum. And for once it's actually easy. I want it. I feel thirsty.

We did some other minor adjustments and then got onto the eating stuff. She took me back (asked my body what age it wanted to return to) to when I was about 5. We talked and tested over an issue that I had at that time that has stayed with me as deep shame. I was horribly affected by the birth of my second brother at that age and my jealousy was HUGE. I so wanted to take it out on him (I didn't) and we talked through those feelings. Where in my body I was feeling them, what words were coming up in my head, anything I was feeling. I felt it in my arms as an almost overpowering urge to push, reject and shove and had interpreted those feelings as being how I felt about my brother (whom I've always adored btw).

Cut to the chase, through various tests and acupressure and sitting with my feelings and just spilling what was coming to the surface, I came to see that my issue was not over the jealousy - I was FIVE and my Dad had a new favourite, how else was I going to feel? - but over the depth of my feelings. ANY feelings. Because I am someone who feels things BIG and my family liked to feel things small. Big feelings are undesirable. Inappropriate. Unlikeable. Wrong. Inconvenient. Not welcome. Not nice.

Hi, I'm British.

And so I learnt that I needed to suppress those feelings by hook or by crook. I had to be good. And in the past I've used nicotine and running away to deal with them but now that neither of those options are available to me, I eat. I literally push down those feelings with food. I swallow them up.

I also learnt, throught the consultation part, that I'm a textbook kinesthetic learner which makes perfect sense to me and puts a lot of things I already knew into a nice tidy package that I can refer to.

So that was the first session. It rocked. I have another booked for later in the month. We have no idea what will happen then. More of the same or something else to look at? We'll see.

Weirdest thing? I've had chronic knee pain now for a couple of months. Very bad. Almost unable to drive bad. It's gone. I haven't had it since I walked out of LK's therapy room and yet we did nothing to directly address physical problems.

We talked about my (recent) inability to commit to regular exercise. What could I do that would stick? In my childhood and teens I was a ballet dancer. In my 20s I was a farm-hand, a waitress and later an aerobics queen. In my 30s I taught various kinds of fitness. In my 40s I got a desk job and 30 pounds of extra body.

I'm over aerobics and its many cousins. I like the idea of running but not the reality. The gym bores me silly and my schedule is a mess so it's easy for me to skive. Money and childcare keep me from regular classes of any kind and yes, I'm great at making up excuses.

After my appointment the internets brought me to Bindu Wiles's brilliant 21.5.800 for which I duly signed up. And then yesterday, freewheeling through blogs, years after it was actually cool, I discovered hooping. And fell in LOVE. Within a couple of hours I'd been shopping and bought the makings of a hoop for me and a hoop for Evie. I'd watched numerous hooping videos on youTube and subscribed to some hoopy blogs.

This morning, at about 7.30, while Evie and her cousin (who had a sleepover last night minus the sleep.) played in her room, I was in the garden with the chickens. Trying out m'hoop. It's a humbling experience when you realise you've lost all co-ordination and can't spin a hoop for more than four spins without it knocking seven shades out of your anklebones. I persevered and pretty soon had it up to 17. Which probably sounds a bit crap but it made me skip around the garden punching the air.

So, kinesiology, water, yoga, writing and a big old hoop. It's feeling good.

I'm loving the process.

There's a meadow about 200 yards directly across a crop field outside our garden gate. I've always loved it. I wrote this post about an experience I had there.

Last night I dreamt there were wolves in that meadow. I was standing outside our house, almost in the manor grounds, and I could see a single male wolf just sitting between here and the meadow. Calmly watching us. Me?

Behind him, sitting or lying down, relaxed, were about 10 other wolves. Adults. And behind them, playing with the lambs that really are in that meadow at the moment, were several cubs.

There was no threat. No aggression. Just observation. This was no 'wolf at the door' dream. He was a handsome, red wolf. Watching.

Someone who worked at the manor (completely fabricated by my mind) said to someone else,"Oh that's Arthur. We haven't seen him and his family for years. It's fantastic to see him back."

As I turned and headed home to tell Charlie, a TV crew passed me, headed towards Arthur. I looked towards him and he'd disappeared. The watcher not ready to be watched.

I'm confused by Arthur (I wonder if he has a round table). Was he here for the place, the land, or was he here for me? Or someone else? I can't tell. Which makes me think he wasn't here for me. Maybe he'll come back.

Wolf dreams challenge us to confront what we are afraid of, and to not lurk in the shadows of our own subconscious.  Wolf dreams offer us the gift of strength, freedom and the ability to fiercely protect that which is dear to us.  Wolves in our dreams invite us to claim back our own power, to run freely and live our most authentic life possible, without fear, without shackles, without shame.

- The Dream Well