Any creative project that either allows me to contribute to an important conversation or issue in my community--like making yoni sculptures or building the rainbow flag sculpture and painting signs for the Pride Festival--or allows me to touch another life with generosity, like all of the creative activities that go into making blessing packages for The Conspiracy of Blessings (which hopefully will get renewed attention now that Pride is over). I also love writing, whether blog posts or journal entries or poems.

I guess my favorite creative outlet is really SHARING.

I feel so lost.

Pride was great (even though it rained and we had to shut down early). It did start out as the biggest festival this county has seen, but the rain started as soon as the parade was over and just got worse over the course of the afternoon. We had a lot of setbacks and cancellations to work through but my Board members stayed strong and positive through it all. I'm so proud of us and know that next year will be even better now that we have some experience under our belts.

I took the last week to give myself time to recover before taking on anything new or even facing the other areas of my life that need attention now (other than giving my kids lots of attention).  I spent the entire day yesterday reading the last Harry Potter book. It felt great to not change out of my nightgown or be needed by anyone for anything (the kids were off with friends).

But today I've come crashing back to the reality of my home life. I have to give my ex-husband huge kudos for giving me space as I gave most of my time and energy to Pride over the last month and put our relationship issues on hold. He also gave me the last week of recuperation. But he wants to know, needs to know where we're at and where I think we're going. He finally asked today and I don't know what to say.

See, we've figured something out. The two months that all my feelings for him came flooding back at the beginning of summer were the two months I was on the pill in an attempt to balance out my whacked hormones. When I went off the pill because I felt that it was making my pms worse, within a couple weeks I had returned to my old state concerning him. All the good feelings I had, all the passion I felt are completely gone again and I feel dead inside when it comes to that part of my self. So now I don't know, who is the real me? Is all the negativity I feel in my intimate life due to whacked hormones and I'm "normal" when I'm on the pill? Or does something in the way the pill affects my hormones make me feel sexual and passionate for my ex again just because he's here? Are the hormones really balanced with the pill or whacked out in a different way? How do I know what emotions are real if my hormones can have such tremendous effects on them?

The only thing I know for sure is that my current state is not "normal" for me. The immense negative feelings I have towards him at times and the complete absence of an erotic or sensual self tells me that something is wrong inside.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to admit my emotions are out of my conscious control when I've worked so frickin' hard the last 15 years to master my emotions instead of letting them master me? Borderline Personality Disorder is an emotional disorder. I've been out at the edges of emotional insanity, I know where that leads, and it kills me that I am once again in a place where I cannot control my emotions or their effect on the people around me. I damaged my son when I was sick before. Now I feel like I'm damaging both my kids and my ex by swinging us all on this yo-yo of emotions. I thought I had it all figured out when I ended our marriage last November and everything would have been fine if the pill hadn't sent me spinning back into my intense passion and erotic life. How much of what I felt was hormones, unleashed erotic feeling that had been buried for years and really had nothing to do with my ex? How much was the love I've always felt for him but possibly bottled up because he isn't the partner I feel I need and desire?

It's extremely frustrating. I'm trying to work with my body naturally by taking vitamins and supplements that are supposed to help with PCOS symptoms, but I'm not seeing any noticeable change. I don't know where to go from here. Do I experiment with the pill again or another hormone treatment? Or do I try to work through the emotional aspects and  use natural remedies and hope the body will respond?

I've been holding these questions at bay for well over a month, focusing all my attention on Pride, work and the kids. But I can't keep putting them off. I have to figure out how bring the real me back in entirety, not just bits and pieces. I know I'm doing a lot of things right: serving my community and growing as a leader, parenting consciously, figuring out how to bridge my bliss with my career, and living a creative life. But I don't think I've ever gotten the intimate relationship part of my life right. Until my ex I couldn't sustain any kind of intimacy for more than 7 months (excluding best friends). Now I have a person who adores me and would stay by my side the rest of my life if I allowed him to and all I want to do is run away from him.

I heard someone say recently that a spiritual partnership can only work with an equal. He is not my equal. That is one thing I know to the depths of my being. As amazing as he is, he is not my equal emotionally, intellectually, or spiritually. It's not a judgment, I don't think I'm better than him in any way. We're just in very different places in our evolution. Maybe equal is not the right word, but I can't think of another. It's not enough to have someone who adores me, I need someone who stimulates me, who knows who they are, who is consciously co-creating their own life and wants to share it with me and even co-create together. I learn(ed) so much from him and experience(d) the deepest love I've ever known outside of my love for my children. But I believe what our relationship had to give us is almost over. Yet now, I have this niggling doubt in the back of my mind that perhaps my perception is skewed by my hormonal imbalance.

How do I know what thoughts and feelings are real? How do I make a decision without knowing?

A great article over at Alternet about the positive changes that would occur to marriage (and have been occuring for centuries) if same sex couples are allowed to marry. An excerpt:

"I think same-sex marriage does, and will, have an effect on opposite-sex marriage.

Not in an immediate cause-and-effect way, of course. When Adam and Stephen get married in Massachusetts, it doesn't send out magical death-rays across the country to destroy the marriage of Alan and Evelyn in Kansas.

But I think it has an effect. Not a trivial one, either. And I think the movement to legalize same-sex marriage does itself a disservice by acting like it doesn't.

Here's why.

In order for our society to accept or even tolerate same-sex marriage, a lot of fairly basic, deep-rooted ideas have to change. The way we define family. The way we think of what it means to be a man, and what it means to be a woman. The importance of sex and sexual fulfillment. What we consider natural and normal. Etc., etc., etc.

All of these things shape our practice of marriage, our understanding of what it is and what it's for. And in order for us to accept or even tolerate same-sex marriage, all of them will need to change.

Thus changing the shape of marriage.

All marriage."

Winter Leaves

"If we want to make the imagination feel at home, generosity shows us the way. How else can imagination thrive but in a place where welcoming comes first and where judgment feels no need to speak and finally feels no need to be?" -- Sarah Wider

"I live in a world of the body. My spirituality is twined with flesh, with bodies that bleed and birth and nurse their young. That is the high calling of motherhood: a demand that we learn to negotiate the spirit world while remaining firmly rooted in our earthly humanity." Elrena Evans

This little passage just grabbed my heart and squeezed with its truth-ness.

Image Source: Howard Weindgarden

"Just as there exists in writing a literal truth and a poetic truth, there also exists in a human being a literal anatomy and a poetic anatomy. One, you can see; one, you cannot. One is made of bones and teeth and flesh; the other is made of energy and memory and faith. But they are both equally true." in Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Old spiritual friends of mine would joke about the metaphorical brick-on-the-head response the Universe would give us when we failed to get a message about a change we need to make in our lives. We try to hide from our shadows but eventually they track us down and kick our ass if we don't honor them.

Tonight, Bill's Nigredo post inspired me to write this post and share the piece below I wrote a couple of years ago. I think I am also going through a nigredo phase, facing the darkness in order to purify and come out integrated and healed.

Every single emotional frustration and health issue in my life right now (outside of work) points in one direction: I have PCOS and it is only managed best by diet and exercise. My weight is exacerbating my illness. My illness is exacerbating my weight. It's a vicious cycle and I've been allowing myself to drown in it.

I've recently learned that not only is PCOS the cause of my imbalanced hormones (which cause some emotional issues), lack of sex drive, and pms problems, but also that it causes anxiety and depression. I've been wondering of late how I became so anxious the last few years. I didn't used to be this way, even in my worst depressions and obsessions. I was shy but did not suffer the social anxiety issues that I do now. I've also recently realized that I live in a state of constant anxiety. Even though we have a new car, there are little things about it that make me worried we bought a lemon (something I did once when I was young). There are other things that keep me constantly anxious as well and it takes a lot of internal dialogue to let them go.

Now I have to wonder, is my IBS the result of the PCOS causing anxiety? My IBS started at the same time my women's health issues hit a crisis level. Did the anxiety and PCOS symptoms bring about the IBS? If I lose weight and follow the natural health plan to manage and heal my PCOS, will every health issue and most of my emotional issues--mood swings, anxiety, mild depression, etc--be healed as well? Am I on the brink of major life improvement and the actual absence of physical suffering if I finally become serious about diet and exercise? How's that for a brick to the head? : )

It's time. I knew it was coming. Two years ago I wrote the piece below through which I finally looked my eating addiction in the eye. Now I know it isn't just my addiction that has created all the physical and emotional issues I've been suffering. I am not the failure I often imagine myself to be. I have biological issues that need healing just as much as the emotional ones. And it's time to address them.

I think I'm sharing this now because it's a way of making myself accountable to the truth I am facing right now, but may be tempted to deny again tomorrow (or even later tonight as various things in the kitchen entice me for my usual late night snack). I can't put off my health any longer. I can't resist the desire my soul has for me to heal both heart and body. It's time to stop making excuses and convincing myself I have a little more time to just enjoy life and the foods I crave or that I need to do more internal work first. I can't keep trying to be half-assed in my approach, taking supplements and eating a lot of the right foods at meals, but neglecting to exercise or fight the desire to binge when it looms. It's time to be committed, for both myself and my family. It's time to know my real feelings. It's time for my ex-husband and I to know for sure whether I want to be in a relationship with him or not. It's time I stop letting anxiety and mild depression prevent me from engaging life more and blaming my lack of participation on my health problems (although getting involved with and honoring my commitment to Pride is a really good step in the right direction).  

I've focused so much on my emotional and spiritual health at the cost of my physical health. I cannot be integrated until I bring as much consciousness to my body as I do the rest of my life.

I really, really miss parts of the old me. The good parts. My soulful parts that I thought disappeared because of my mismatched marriage but now seem to be at least as much caused by my biological dis-ease. I miss the emotional adventurer who had unusual and amazing life experiences by being open to the Universe and the fantastic human beings in her proximity. I miss the woman who wrote poetry and creative non-fiction like the piece below, really getting into the juiciness of life through language and touching lives with my story and my vulnerability (now I often hide from writing because I know it will draw out truths I don't want to face). As lovely as the Conspiracy Of Blessings is as an art project, it's also incredibly safe considering the content of previous art projects. I'm hiding. I'm fearful. It's time to love myself to wholeness, body and soul.

I end the piece below by saying I know I wasn't ready to make the changes at that moment. But now I believe I am. Or perhaps it's more truthful to say that I'm deciding I am ready. And I want to keep deciding in every moment that my health is more important than a short term carbohydrate high or a rebellion against discipline through exercise. It's time.



*

Eating
 
Ariel Gore in  Atlas of the Human Heart writes, "Located in the middle of the chest, behind the breastbone and between the lungs, the heart rests in the pericardial cavity.  This moistened chamber is encaged by the ribs.  The diaphragm, a thick layer of muscle, lies below.  The heart, therefore, is well protected."       

I eat late at night, when I'm too tired to fill my heart's hunger with the healthy sustenance of words written on a page. I eat when I'm bored and the interaction of husband and wife or mother and child fails to keep me stimulated. I eat when I feel too weak to seek the nourishment of friendship, too insecure to pick up the phone or pay a visit.  

I eat to numb feelings of being commonplace. Non-conformist and adventurous tendencies flow through me.  I see other futures where I live in an artists' commune in San Francisco or travel to Europe and Africa with my sister. I have dreams of art installations at city galleries and publishing poetry chapbooks. I have dreams of mystical adventures where Spirit encompasses my being in a community of practitioners. I cannot help but question whether I have chosen what is most important to me or what my family and my community expect.

I eat to protect myself from feeling vulnerable. I lose friends and lovers when I am vulnerable. I lose people's interest when I am authentic to my inner voices.  I eat to avoid the feeling that I am alone and that no one wants to listen to or participate in the real story of my life. If I am busy putting food into my mouth, chewing, swallowing, over and over again, I don't have to worry about rejection of what might come out of my mouth instead. The real me.  The loud me.  The philosophical me. The awkward me.  The well intentioned me. The evolving me.  The loving me.  The me inside this thick shell of fat.

I am a crab who inhabits a permanent shell to protect my heart because ribs and diaphragm don't feel like enough.  I have constructed a shell so thick that there is no more coming out, no more emerging now and then.  This shell is all encompassing and restrains every inch of my being.  This shell is becoming too heavy and makes attempts at movement painful.

***

 I just wiped the crumbs of the third single serving bag of potato chips from my shirt.  I clean the gooey remains of red pepper cream cheese from my teeth with my tongue.  I wash all of this down with the sweetness of my third glass of pineapple juice.  

Yet as I write these words I imagine that I do not have a problem with food and vulnerability.  I want to believe my only problem is with a lack of willpower.  I guilt myself into believing I am merely weak and unable to say no to my cravings.  I wasn't really hungry.  Not in my belly or my body.  But my heart starves for so much more than this life I am living.

Chocolate Croissant
Ham and Swiss Croissant
Pretzels
Pringles and SoBe Green Tea
Banana
Pork Roast Stew and French Bread
Seconds of Stew and Bread
A few more bites of Pork Roast secretly snuck directly from the pan
A Hot Fudge Sundae
A bag of single serving Cheetoes
Two single serving bags of Lay's Potato Chips dipped in Red Pepper Cream Cheese
Three large glasses of Pineapple Juice

This is what I fed myself today to keep my real feelings away. With each bite I swallow the sadness, stuff myself behind the fat, try to fill the emptiness where I should be.

I am also giving myself the illusion of joy. Carbohydrate addiction keeps seratonin flowing in my brain and prevents the responsibility of creating my own happiness.  It's much easier to reach for a bag of Doritos than to go for a walk.  Ice cream brings instant gratification, unlike the life changes necessary to become friends with my body.  Hours spent cooking are less threatening than self reflection.

Where do I even begin to look for myself?  Am I hidden in my thighs where they rub together when I walk so that I wear out the inner seams of my pants or cause a rash if I forget to wear tights or shorts under skirts?  Do I look around my hips with the wide stretch marks, leaving little flesh smooth and uncorrupted?  Can I pull away the folds of my belly that prevent me from comfortably touching my toes?  Is the self I have forgotten sitting inside the bulge of my double chin or the wrinkle of fat on the middle of my back? Or have I wrapped myself around the flab of my upper arms? Maybe I am crouching in the shadows of my sagging breasts? There's so much extra flesh, I don't know where to start looking.

I am cramped between the demands of family and survival in a capitalistic culture that doesn't value my art as much as it values my productive office skill. I am exhausted in the evenings, often unable to sustain the energy necessary for exercise or quality writing or spontaneous creative projects.  I chose a partner who prefers the comfort and quiet of home to gathering with friends, and video games to hikes in the local forest.  I have become complacent.  My husband and I have both gained forty pounds since we've been together.  He likes to say that we're fat and happy.  I am definitely not happy.  I have settled for comfortable instead of following my passion. I have traded my creativity for security.  I am a stereotype of lower middle-class America. I am a statistic for obesity.  I am not the feminist role model for my daughter I aspire to be.

***

I recently came upon this anonymous piece of wisdom, "To deprive yourself of your symptom before it is time, is to deprive yourself of your learning before it is complete." I will not wake up tomorrow ready to hike my way to health.  I will not immediately resolve to ignore my cravings for carbohydrate highs.  The current fad diets will not quickly lure me into trying to lose weight.  The immensity of my eating problem is just beginning to reveal itself to me. 

One of the misconceptions about over-weight people is the belief that only willpower is required to overcome the problem.  If only we could be strong enough to say no to our cravings and to get ourselves walking.  If we fail to wield our willpower, then we are merely fat losers.  Our culture doesn't seem to realize that most weight problems are not solved by Atkins or Slim Fast alone.  Food addiction, like all addiction, is rooted in heartache.

I have more to learn before I can treat the symptom of over-eating. My first lesson is in forgiveness.  I must forgive myself.  I am one hundred pounds overweight because I have not learned how to grieve for and grow out of my own heartaches through self love, instead of food and fat.  This is a thick wall I have constructed. It will require time and compassion to tear it down without hurting myself.  I need to be able to look in the mirror and see my self as beautiful, even though the world around me tells me that I'm frumpy or hideous.  I need to trust my own process of healing and know that I am not a failure because I eat a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream or fail to walk every single morning.  I will not heal if I am not kind to myself during dark nights crying in front of the refrigerator or sleeping on cookie crumbs.  Recovery requires more than self control.  It requires a willingness to dig beneath the fat and find the lovable woman within.

     

How's this for a brick in the head after the last post?!  Just stumbled upon this at a blog I'd never visited before. Gotta love serenidipity.

"Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating that kind of energy toward yourself--if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself--it is very difficult to take care of another person. In the Buddhist teaching, it’s clear that to love oneself is the foundation of the love of other people. Love is a practice. Love is truely a practice."
~~~Shambhala Sun March 2006

Sharing the messages I'm receiving from the Universe today, so that I remember the dialogue is taking place when I pay attention.

"You're in labor with yourself. You're giving birth to yourself." Christiane Northrup on women's health issues after age 35. Very enlightening idea considering my current health crisis!  "The body needs pleasure. If you're not getting the pleasure you need through good things like exercise, meditation and sex, then you'll get it through alcohol, food, or drugs." Wowza!

"I had an intuition that when you really annunciate what you want in the world you will always be greeted, in the first place, with some species of silence. It may be that the silence is there so that you can hear exactly what you have asked for, and hear it more clearly so that you can get it right." David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity

Ok, I don't know who this David Whyte guy is but he seems to be popping up all over the place for me. I'm sure if I did a search in my blog, I'd find several quotes I've posted by him over the last few months. So maybe I'm getting another message from the Universe that I have something to learn from him.

This quote struck me this morning because I am struggling with the silent spaces between the manifestations of what I'm creating. Outside of my health/relationship issues, I felt extremely content during the weeks leading up to Pride when I had painting or organizing to do every night and weekend. It was exhausting, but the good kind. Now things are quiet again and I don't have an activity to put that kind of energy into unless I create one. Even though I know I need to focus on my health, that isn't a full time activity.

The other place the silence is getting to me is in the friendship arena. Somehow last January I immediately created an opportunity to manifest what I had annunciated to the Universe about having an opportunity to use my leadership, creativity, organization and non-profit management skills in one place. But at that time I also annunciated a tremendous desire for a certain kind of friend, an intimate friend. Although I am developing new friendships, I haven't experienced any of the magic that I use to in my best friendships. I used to have so much magic in my life concerning relationships. I intertwined in so many lives before working and getting married. I was the kind of person that people just opened up to. What happened to me? Why do I feel so detached? I'm having an incredibly difficult time bringing myself into alignment with what I say I desire. My heart craves intimate connections but my everyday behavior isn't really conducive to creating that level of intimacy. I'm shy and quiet and not very good at drawing people out.

Hmm...I guess I want the Universe to drop a magical friendship in my lap like it used to. But I can see how  it might serve my evolution better to really have to work at opening up and not making judgments about the apparent lack of (friendship) chemistry or commonalities with the people who do move into my sphere.

It's a blustery day here on the North Coast of California today. Quite beautiful. I love stormy weather.

I wish you all a bliss-full day.

My relationship to my body since nearly all of my current life difficulties stem from PCOS and being overweight and too sedentary. (see next entry)

My push and pull with the Divine. I keep making half commitments and then realizing how much time has passed since I made a deliberate connection with the Sacred.

Actually, I guess both of these could fall under: I need to act in integrity with what I profess to commit to.

Extremely complicated. : )

I know and love my body as a vessel for experiencing the sacred and experiencing altered states of consciousness. Whether through mystical experience, dance, natural substances, sex, or intense sensation/body modification, I adore my body for it's ability to sing in tune with the music of the Universe.

I once used my body as the only method of free expression that I felt I had as a teen and young adult. I felt very limited in my life, as if I had little freedom to be my self. I felt my body was the only thing I had free reign over. My tattoos and piercings and crazy hair cuts and style of dress and make up have always been about using my body as a walking piece of art that says something about who I am. My body modifications have never been about fads, they've been about expressing myself or staking my claim on my body or experiencing altered states. My tattoos are of the rose (my plant familiar), the Ohm symbol (honoring where I come from), a turquoise crescent moon (representing my commitment to the spiritual path back when I practiced Wicca but still relevant), the chinese symbol for water (I am a walking puddle of emotions always), and a giant tribal letter "I" on my back for the first letter of my son's name (I still need to get one for my daughter).  I have piercings (nipples, tongue, nose and ears) because I have a fetish for metal, a love for silver jewelry, and the tongue ring kept me from smoking or chewing my lips to shreds with anxiety.

Now I have less of a need to express myself so intensely and I need to develop a new relationship with my body. A real relationship based on respect and a desire for true health. Up until now, the way I have perceived it is that I live in my head and my heart and my body is just the mode of transportation that gets practical things done outside of ecstatic experiences. I've not treated it as well as I should (although I could have been much worse to it). I've not embodied my own body. I've kept my distance from it.

I am not too immersed in a negative body image. My body is good even with its big curves, stretch marks, scars, and other issues. I don't buy in to the cultural idea of beauty--at least not consciously. Although I think it's a lifelong endeavor to keep cultural influences from poisoning us. I do think I'm prettier when I don't have as much weight and my face isn't so round, but I don't walk around feeling ugly or letting it hold me back. It probably helps that I've lived with a man who has told me I'm beautiful nearly every day for the last 7 years. It probably helps that I've had many lovers and participated in a variety of events where all bodies were appreciated. I've had enough validation to really feel that I am beautiful to many people, especially the people that matter, and no one is beautiful to all people.

This is an easy one. This time last year I was preparing to break up with my husband and having a complicated long distance relationship with a woman who awakened my passions. I would tell myself to look more deeply into my health issues now that I know they are the cause of so much of my emotional turmoil the last few years. If I had known then about PCOS and all the ways it effects me, maybe I wouldn't have put my family through our break up, reconciliation and current no-man's-land that we're living in emotionally. Maybe we would have been in the no-man's-land for awhile anyway (it can take months for the natural supplements to balance things out) but there wouldn't have been so much anger and sadness. I would have never made it about his failures or believing I'm a lesbian...I would have made it what it was, a health problem that needs to be healed before any other steps can be taken.

Andrew Schneider: “When a being is authentically what it is, the presence of Spirit within reveals itself as Beauty which touches our heart. Whenever we experience beauty, our soul is activated and love is awakened. And whenever you are true to yourself, you are beautiful!


“When we open to Spirit, we radiate beauty. Beauty transforms, so when we radiate beauty, we empower others and give them a glimpse of their own beauty, the Spirit within themselves, which is the source of their power. The key is that we must know we are beautiful, and feel that beauty within ourselves, before we can empower others.



“Beauty is magnetic and draws our heart into loving contact and connection with it. We only love what we, in our hearts, perceive as beautiful. Deepening our contact with, and appreciation of, beauty will increase the love experienced in our lives.”

Pelicans on the Beach

"What would it be like if you lived each day, each breath,as a work of art in progress? Imagine that you are a masterpiece unfolding, every second of every day, a work of art taking form with every breath."

Thomas Crum

"You wouldn't know it by looking at the man in the t-shirt standing on the street corner, but if you listen, it's easy to tell that David Juritz is a world class musician. He's just traded in concert halls for street corners. The violinist left his London home on June 9 and has since traveled the globe as a street performer, raising money to fund music education for some of the world's poorest children. Near Stanford University, he raised $500 in an hour; in Berlin, he got $16 after 3 windy, rainy hours; and in all, he's collected over $65K. But his best moments aren't associated with large amounts of money, he adds." From CharityFocus

Learn more him and the Musequality program at his website: Round The World and Bach

We just found out my son is a finalist for the Questbridge scholarship, which would give him a full ride to Columbia University to pursue film (or science or both if he  can't make up his mind)! If Columbia accepts him, he's got the scholarship!

I'm so excited I have tears in my eyes!

p.s. I have to give props to the school he's attending. Two other students who are attending or who have attended the school are also finalists. That's pretty remarkable for a tiny charter school in a rural community when there are only about 1000 finalists in the nation.