I meant to post this yesterday, because V-Day is how I acknowledge Valentine's, holding the women of the world in my heart with even more intentions for peace and healing than usual. But I've been sick, my daughter's sick and it's just been a hard week all around. However, this is too important not to acknowledge....and this is why my heart feels a call to Africa.

Blog hopping awhile back led me to this article in Glamour by Eve Ensler about the horrors women in the Congo are living.

" I have just returned from hell. I am trying for the life of me to figure out how to communicate what I have seen and heard in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. How do I convey these stories of atrocities without your shutting down, quickly turning the page or feeling too disturbed?

How do I tell you of girls as young as nine raped by gangs of soldiers, of women whose insides were blown apart by rifle blasts and whose bodies now leak uncontrollable streams of urine and feces?

This journey was a departure for me. It began with a man, Dr. Denis Mukwege, and a conversation we had in New York City in December 2006, when he came to speak about his work helping women at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu. It began with my rusty French and his limited English. It began with the quiet anguish in his bloodshot eyes, eyes that seemed to me to be bleeding from the horrors he'd witnessed.

Something happened in this conversation that compelled me to go halfway around the world to visit the doctor, this holy man who was sewing up women as fast as the mad militiamen could rip them apart.

I am going to tell the stories of the patients he saves so that the faceless, generic, raped women of war become Alfonsine and Nadine-women with names and memories and dreams. I am going to ask you to stay with me, to open your hearts, to be as outraged and nauseated as I felt sitting in Panzi Hospital in faraway Bukavu.

Before I went to the Congo, I'd spent the past 10 years working on V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls. I'd traveled to the rape mines of the world, places like Bosnia, Afghanistan and Haiti, where rape has been used as a tool of war. But nothing I ever experienced felt as ghastly, terrifying and complete as the sexual torture and attempted destruction of the female species here. It is not too strong to call this a femicide, to say that the future of the Congo's women is in serious jeopardy...

If 250 women who have been raped, torn, starved and tortured can find the strength to dance us up a mountain, surely the rest of us can find the resources and will to guarantee their future."

Androgyny, shamanism, artist as cultural healer, writing, sculpture, empathy, stories, queer activism, feminism, women,  family, community, rebellion, revolution, passion, breaking through self inflicted limitations, being assertive, work, fulfillment, money, my son and college, parenting, sacrifice...

These especially have been on my mind and heart the last few days....

"A good artist, it is often said, is fifty to a hundred years ahead of their time, they describe what lies over the horizon in our future world. The artists, of whatever epoch, must also depict this new world before all of the evidence is in. They must rely on the embracing abilities of their imagination to intuit and desribe what is yet a germinating seed in their present time, something that will only flower after they have written the line or painted the canvas." David Whyte Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity

When asked in an interview with Bill Moyers,

"Who interprets the divinity inherent in nature for us today? Who are our shamans? Who

interprets unseen things for us?" Campbell replies, "It is the function of the artist to do

this. The artist is the one who communicates myth for today."

I adore the artist Shiloh McCloud. I first came upon her when I found her debut coloring book journal for women in the local metaphysical bookstore several years ago. I've been collecting each new one as it comes out ever since. Someday I will own one of her paintings.

I am deeply inspired by her. She has found a way to be a cultural healer with her art.

She just created this little inspirational video, which is a great introduction to the work of her heart.

I find this poem she sent out in yesterday's newsletter to be a wonderful reminder of this fallow time of year. Happy Candlemas!
 Garden of Renewal
May you enter your soul garden today
and find that winter's cold is not quite as cold.
Maybe we don't feel it yet, as old ideas do linger.
But Spring has called her maidens,
I can hear them chanting today. Listen...
Her paper white narcissus are blooming right next to the red poinsetta.
And the flowers are sending out their messages:
forgive...try again...move forward...life comes...
death comes...find new life...joy is dawning.
Turn the garden beds of your mind. With a bright pitchfork.
The pile may be deep. It may be hard ground.  It may be murky.
Surely it is compost for the new flowers.
Do with it what we must do with compost. Use it to nurture new life.
Don't leave it in a pile in the corner  where no one wants to go.
If you look, you will see that nasturtiums are growing amongst the dank.
They sing... You can grow anywhere you are planted.
The robins, who live by the hundreds in your garden
red breasted and full of spark are singing songs of renewal.
Of letting go. Of holding onto only what is needed.
Things have happened that make us sad, uncomfortable,
doubting and in anger too.
Pick up a few stones, and for each one say a prayer
for the hard things you have witnessed.
And place them at the gardens edge - organized -
so they do not take up too much space.
Turn that earth over and over. Smell the fresh soil. 
Then get your seeds ready.  Begin planting and saying new prayers.
Intentions. Hopes. Dreams. Visions. Creations.
See the flowers bloom in your mind.
Tiny worms travel in twos like veins beneath the earth skin.
Making space for your seeds and sprouts.
Creating a great exhale for your garden,
she welcomes your new thought seeds
and the wild seeds all over the garden of the soul.
Even though our challenges will persist (they always do)
We can choose day by day bliss and beauty.
We have to in order to survive. So choose.
It has been a long day in the garden,
and it is time to go into the kitchen now.
Turn on the tea kettle and light three candles.
One for yesterday and one for today and one for tomorrow.
Write in your journal. Weave your shawl.
Make a pot of medicine soup. Pick up your guitar.
This is the time of renewal. And it belongs to you.
Amen

Shiloh Sophia McCloud © 2008 

This is lovely. Thanks for sharing Bill....

This is awesome (& only 2 minutes long)...

"Love means to love that which is unlovable, or it is no virtue at all." G.K. Chesterton

Ooh, this is an easy one. I am so proud of my best friend Crystal for following her dreams and trusting the Unvierse to support her while she gave up a well paying and very secure job, moved across the country and obtained her Bachelor's and Master's degrees simultaneously! Now she's graduated, moved back to this side of the country again, and setting up a new life in Portland, OR.

I haven’t written in a week because I was in Long Beach attending a Consolidated Association of Pride, Inc. conference and then I came home with a nasty cold and now my daughter has a fever.

CAPI represents Pride Festival Organizations in Arizona, California, Hawai'i, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah & Mexico. The conference is an opportunity to learn about various aspects of operating a nonprofit and producing a Pride Festival.

The variety of festivals represented is remarkable. Of course you have the well known Prides like San Francisco, West Hollywood and Long Beach, which have multi-million dollar budgets and a range of fifty to several hundred thousand attendees at their events. But most of the association is comprised of smaller Prides like our own. To compare…our festival has a $20,000 budget and 2500 attendees.

What I was amazed to discover is that this is an incredible support network for an emerging organization and festival like our own. Most of the larger Pride organizations are very committed to supporting the smaller organizations in a variety of ways, including financial support. They also volunteer at one another’s events. I was invited to three different festivals with financial assistance offered to attend if needed.

This was my very first conference of any kind. I was thrilled to be offered the opportunity by my Board of Directors and the generous sponsorship of some of the larger pride organizations. But I had no idea how rewarding an experience it would be. We – my co-chair and I – learned a lot and brought home tons of ideas to improve/enhance our activities. But it was even more enriching for me personally…

I was very concerned about my networking capabilities. I’m inexperienced, I’m an introvert and small talk does not come to me easily. I also tend to have bouts of social anxiety. But from the moment we arrived we were welcomed with such kindness that I never had a moment of awkwardness the entire four days! It also helped that a conversation could easily be started with just about anyone by asking questions about their festival. We all had common ground to start with, which makes building relationships so much easier. A co-worker also suggested that I felt more comfortable because I am so incredibly passionate about queer activism. When I have passion, I'm not so shy.

This was also my first experience with the queer community outside of my own rural area. I feel like now I have truly experienced the Family aspect of being queer. My co-chair wanted me to go because he felt it was such an enriching experience intellectually, emotionally and spiritually (he attended last year as well). I'm so glad he encouraged me because it really did hook me into the macrocosmic queer community and experience.  I am on FIRE for queer activism now.

Projects on my horizon...developing a volunteer program, laying the foundation for a Community Center, and setting up a local information and referral cell phone line....as well as producing The Laramie Project and the 2008 Festival of course. It's going to be a big year!

I wrote a blog post last night venting, spewing, crying my frustrations about how I feel my internal evolution is not mirrored by my external circumstances. But I realized I don't need to share all the ugly details, I just need to express that I feel stuck. I feel neglected and ignored. I feel like all the bursting from self imposed limitations is insigificant since I can't actually move into the freedom I feel. I am held back by forces out of my control. I feel edgy with disappointment. Sharp edges that are starting to jut into the world around me and cause damage to unsuspecting hearts. I am impatient for change.

The places that stagnate are haunting me, dragging me down into a melancholy place. I have not made art in two months. I spend my weekends mostly in bed reading, bloghopping, and watching movies. Distracted. Avoiding. Resisting. Knowing there are things I could do to make it better but choosing not to. Indulging the ego, the suffering, the parts of my soul that cling to living as if I have not awakened. But I am awake. And so I suffer guilt and the pointing finger of my inner critic. I get bitchy because I'm angry with myself, imagining I am failing somehow.

And yet, I also know that I am in a fallow place right now and who says there is time limit on working in the shadows, deep under the surface, healing and evolving? 

I came across a blog today that talked about having The Februarys and I love what she has to say about it...

"You might recognize the symptoms: a creeping cloudiness across your emotional canvas, increased appetite, decreased activity, insatiable desire to sleep. I think I feel this way every February, when spring, like a late-running pregnancy, begins to feel like a fairy tale. Or a sham...

What was February like for my ancestors, who were pioneers before electricity? They likely slept more, put on a few more pounds for warmth, and rested their bodies before the demanding stretch from springtime until harvest. I have similar impulses now, but our expectations as a society demand top production all year long. What if my evolving biology hasn't kept up with the internet and the fading boundaries on our work times, on our availability to others? What if I need a little hibernation for my body and soul, so that when spring does come (I'll suspend my disbelief here), I'm renewed to produce something with more depth?

Someone once told me that winter drives the roots deep. I hold that thought close these days as I gaze at trees with frail empty arms, holding birds who have not forgotten their songs. Between the cold and the darkness, I've felt my own resources dwindle...My outsides may look frail and empty, but something mystical goes on below, unseen to observing eyes.

February has its place in the calendar, and it has its place in my life cycle-whether I like it or not. I'm still droopy and dreary more often than usual, but I grant this time and this experience legitimacy. It matters. It belongs. The cold, the dark, the reaching out for resources when mine dwindle. The rest, even the illness. My immune system grows stronger with each recovery, and my spirit does the same."

Perhaps I am really only suffering from the stiffness of hibernation, knowing that the thaw is coming, that I will have to stretch into spring and increased activity of the body and soul. Maybe I am taking rest where I can get it, before The Laramie Project takes over my life for a few months and my son goes to college and I move into a new home with a family reduced by half and the agency moves into a new building and the Pride Festival and whatever comes of the new art project that is gestating inside of me. And that is only what I know is coming in 2008.

Perhaps, as usual, I am being too hard on myself. It's been a long hard week. On the heels of coming home renewed in heart and mind from the CAPI conference I got sick but had to work because I used up all my time off. Then my daughter got sick and now it seems she may have chicken pox (seriously...chicken pox...and she's 12)! So I'm justifiably exhausted and burned out and processing, processing, processing all the commotion and stagnation in my life.

Sadly, I can't answer this question. I don't remember my childhood prior to my parents' divorce when I was 11. Seriously, I don't remember anything. I don't remember my parents being together or any of the places we lived in. I don't remember what life was like before the traumas began (I was molested within three months of my parents separating and then my mom hooked up with my alchoholic/drug addict stepfather). I don't remember what it was like to be a carefree child or to live a life that wasn't mired in poverty and dysfunction. I don't remember what I imagined or dreamed of. I don't remember what games I played. The only memories I do have come from photographs and memorabilia, not from within my own mind.

I think this is why I have a tough time connecting to children. I don't remember what it's like to think or feel like a child. Pre-teens and teens I can relate to. In fact, as a mother, I am strange in that I love the teen years more than any other. I love watching their brains and personalities take shape. I love when they're finally capable of holding and pondering abstract thought. I love witnessing their passions come to life. I love the deep conversations as they try to wrestle with big social issues and figure out what they believe. Adolescence is so exciting when approached as a wonder instead of something to dread.

Anyway, I've never quite figured out why I don't remember my first 11 years. It could have been the trauma of my parents separating I suppose, but I doubt it because I never really connected to my adopted dad as if he was truly my own. My best guess is that the intensity of my empathy and carrying my mother's big hurting heart inside my own caused me to shut down. It was too much for my young little heart to bear. Maybe this is why I struggle so with getting through my issues with my mom. Will I ever be able to fully heal if I don't access those initial years of heartache? Will I ever understand my empathy without going back to when it first awakened?

When I was pregnant with both of my children...

I became pregnant with my son the very first time I had sex at 16. My mother didn't allow me to go through sex education so when the guy gave me a line about the condom hurting him because it was too small I believed him (yes, I was that ridiculously naive at 16). I was a Christian at the time and abortion just wasn't an option for me in my heart of hearts (although I did and do respect the choice for other women). I wanted to give my son up for adoption but my mother wouldn't let me and I didn't know any better. She told me that because I was a minor she had a say about what I did with my baby. Her emotional control over me was so total at the time that I didn't even doubt her. She told me I couldn't give up her grandson (see the extremity of her narcissism!), the only adoption she'd allow would be her adopting and raising my son as her own. Well, that just wasn't an option for me. She fucked up her children and I wasn't going to let her fuck up mine as well. I couldn't allow another child to go through the hell I went through in her shadow. So I felt I had no choice, no control. It felt as though motherhood was forced on me. 

Now I look at the situation and realize I still chose it -- I could have given the child to my mother...or put him up for adoption after I was 18 (which I strongly considered when I had my first nervous breakdown). Heck, I could have done what many young mothers have done and abandoned him somewhere. I could have chosen differently but I felt compelled to do what I thought was right by this being I brought into the world. I chose to live up to the responsibility.

Five years later I became pregnant with my daughter during a rape by an abusive lover. He went to prison soon after for other crimes. Again, abortion wasn't an option for me emotionally. So again, I wanted to give her up for adoption. But the bio dad would never, ever sign over his rights. So my only option would have been to give her to the state, where she would live in foster homes until he was released from prison and then he might get custody of her. When I learned that, of course I said "Hell no! " So I felt motherhood was forced on me again. But again, I realize now I could have chosen differently. I could have left her to an uncertain fate. I would have hardly been the first woman who couldn't raise a child conceived by rape.

Now I know that it says a lot about who I am, how strong I am and how deeply I love my children, that I saw no other choice than to be a mother to these two precious souls. It didn't feel like I had choices at the time, but that wasn't truly because of the external circumstances. It was because of who I chose to be. I chose to be strong. I chose to be the one who would love them more than my youth,  more than my freedom, more than my self at the time. This is how I know being Mother is a significant aspect of my life purpose. The Mother came through me when I was most broken and most crazy and buoyed me up to be more, to be everything to these two new human beings who desperately needed someone committed to love and guide them into the world.

Today I am the successful mother of a young man who just got accepted into the Ivy League!!! How crazy cool is that! He's been accepted to Columbia. The situations that left me feeling the most out of control in my life have turned out to be biggest and best blessings and success I'll ever experience. Now I am always aware of the possibility of hidden blessings in everything I find difficult to bear. Although I've been a bit melancholy of late, deep down I know that somehow things will work out perfectly. They always do.

My life, my home and my heart from my ex-husband.

Evelyn seems to be an important messenger in my journey right now (and I believe I have Siona to thank for finding her)...

"Is that the one thing I still need to know?"

"No", the alchemist answered. "What you still need to know is this: before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we've learned as we've moved toward that dream. That's the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one ‘dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.'

"Every search begins with beginner's luck. And every search ends with the victor's being severely tested." - Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream

A moment of intense resonance this is. I needed to be reminded. An up always comes after a down on the wheel of life, just as the down comes after the up. It is my job to reside in the center, witnessing without attaching, feeling the feelings without exaggerating or clinging to the story. The internal evolution I know has taken place is being tested before the external becomes sychronous. Here's to experiencing the stretch of our expansion...

"Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own."

"No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it."

"It's the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them."

I didn’t have one childhood home – I had at least 16 homes during my youth. The longest I’ve lived in one location is the 7 years I’ve lived in my current house. Of course I don’t remember the first few homes (see previous QAR response), my memories begin at age 11.

I remember the 18 foot trailer my family lived in for one of the hottest summer’s in Fresno’s history. One small room for four people. I remember waking up in the middle of the night often to my parents rocking the trailer and since their bed was only a couple feet from my own I could see everything they were doing. My mom was desperate to start a new life and relocated us to be near my grandfather. The trailer was in a trailer park on a man-made lake and the river that fed it. My one true joy that summer—besides the visits to my grandfather’s home on a mountain—was swimming every single day. I had dreams of being an Olympic swimmer (it was a Summer Olympics year). I am more at home in water than anywhere else. I imagine floating in water is very similar to floating in space—something else I aspired to. I wanted desperately to be an astronaut when I was a teenager. Now I wonder that maybe I just yearned for anything that offered a sense of freedom.

I remember the tiny one bedroom apartment in San Diego when we moved back from the unsuccessful stint in Fresno. It was literally on the off-ramp of a freeway and one night a semi truck hit the end of the building but my sister and I somehow slept through it. My stepdad built a wall of shelves in order to make the dining room the master bedroom. That was the home where the drug and alcohol addiction were the worst for my parents – the most prominent memory being the night my stepdad toppled the shelf wall in the house and then went out on the roof when the police came and hooted like a monkey brandishing a two-by-four. Oh yeah, good times. We were also forced to play outside for hours nearly every day while our parents socialized with their druggie friends, so we took to choreographing dances to our favorite Madonna and Michael Jackson tunes.

Let’s see, what other interesting homes do I remember? We moved to Crescent City from San Diego two years later, a town with a population of 3,000 that is in the top corner of California. Again my mother wanted to start over, to get away from the drugs. Unfortunately, bringing my stepdad’s alcoholism meant there was never much improvement till she finally let him go six years later. We lived in someone’s garage for the first few months. I got a terrible case of poison oak. Then we moved into a house that should have been condemned. Within a few months the septic tank sunk in and we had no toilet use. We either peed off the back porch or trudged down to the gas station to go to the bathroom. Our bedroom also had a wall of mold that was impossible to keep away. My best memories of those months are the spontaneous camping trips we took up to the river because they were an escape from the ugliness we lived in. When we camped, it was the wilderness way, which was fun and adventurous. Oh yeah, and when we would run out of food we would go eeling down on the jetty. My sister and I would catch monkey eels and my stepdad would whack them over the head when we pulled them out of the water. It was certainly a unique way to keep hunger at bay. I have to say poverty probably would’ve been a lot harder if my stepdad wasn’t so resourceful. He had been a hobo for several years – and is again last I heard – so he knew a lot about being resourceful. He was incredibly intelligent and it still saddens me to imagine who he could have been if alcoholism hadn’t destroyed him.

After that we lived in several apartments, which were never more than six blocks from the beach in two different directions (cliffs with pebbled beaches in one direction, a bay with sandy beaches in the other). We also lived about 8 blocks from the library. So I was able to escape home often to sit at the beach or go to the library. I read every book written by Agatha Christie. Most of Charles Dickens – Great Expectations has always been a favorite. Then I got weird and geeky and read Karl Marx, Albert Einstein biographies, and Leo Buscaglia.

We moved so much—and never really participated in the communities that we were in—that I’ve never actually felt a strong connection to place until recent years. As much as I want to explore urban life for a little while, it is tough to imagine leaving Humboldt County. I feel as though my children and I are part of the fabric of life here, which is something I never knew in my youth. My current house actually has a lot to be desired—it’s an old house that the landlords refuse to invest in—which is one of the many reasons I’m looking for a new place to live. But my home is Humboldt County and I imagine it will always be the place I return to after adventuring out into the world.

A very interesting article at OurFuture.org -- When Change is not Enough: The Seven Steps to Revolution -- that makes the argument that the United States on the precipice of revolution at this moment in time.