Abhaile...

As I sit here and ponder where my life has taken me the past few months I have to say I am sitting in awe... What began as a small dream and desire in a little room where I would work out peoples tension has become a full, breathing and living experience.

Tomorrow is the first day of the last week of class for the Ireland program. We will not have class again until April 16th, in a small village in Northern Donegal called Glenkolumbkille. Even as I write it and say it in my head it seems like such a dream.

I remember walking in on the first day of class. I was a bundle of emotions and continuously had goose bump flesh from all the knowledge I was gaining. Now, at the beginning of week 20 I am wondering where I will be this time next year. I realize that this trip to Ireland isn't just a tourist jaunt. My life will change in Ireland. Things about me will develop and grow in such a short time. What part of me will remain? What part will I let go of? Where will all this lead me?

I have said it a thousand times, and I am going to say it again. I never imagined a life where I wanted to learn. Now Patrick and I are thinking of where to go to Graduate School.

Here I sit looking at my computer screen, exhausted, weary from the climb. Tonight was the 82ns annual Academy Awards. As a child I used to dream of being on stage as an actress accepting one of those awards... though my life took a different turn, I feel as though I am about to embark on that adventure. That the Oscar is ready for me and my name will be in the envelope.

You can keep your statue though, I'll take Ireland any day of the week... :-)

Space

While I lived my life as a massage therapist I learned a valuable lesson about people and their spaces. I have no idea how many hours of massage I have clocked, but on average I would perform 18-30 massages per week which hourly average up to about 8- a month and so on... So, maybe not as many hours as some, but definitely enough to know...

What I found is a "space". A "space" where you can meet someone in neutral territory. Within this space is a, sometimes unnerving, powerful sense of truth. There can be truth about everything from abuse to unending happiness. What is so unique about this space is that anything goes. Everything is free... There is no judgment because you both come together within that space with everything you came in with and its OK. Because you recognize your own stuff and they recognize their own stuff and its good. I hope that makes sense.

It is very easy for me to meet people in this space and to create friendships and bonds that grow from a place of space. But what my next challenge is, how do I meet myself in this space?

I can accept other peoples baggage far easier than my own. I can recognize similarities in someone else without fully facing my own issues. So how do I meet myself in that space, and be OK with what I see, feel and think? This is a huge fear for me because I don't think I will like what I see. I am afraid of what "I" will think about my own faults. Isn't this a strange conundrum?

Pause

This is by far one of the most difficult weeks Patrick and I go through. For a few years in a row February was always this bear of a month, with hospitalizations or deaths. I have been thinking a lot lately about our friend Carl who passed away 3 years ago and our friends son Franklin who passed that same week. It has been 3 years!

Now I see myself in this space of learning and growth. Far from the stress of business owning and grief of those years. Getting ready to embark upon the adventure of my life! At least up to this point... and I cannot seem to get them out of my mind the past week.

I did not appreciate Carl in life. I never really understood him as a person. He was an amazing artist and spiritualist. Lately I have really wished he was around for us to share this experience with him. He blessed our wedding day, and out lives. He was a friend of Patricks when he had no one to talk to. I miss him.

The loss of our friends son makes me sad... I think of Elisia and my friend Matt who passed when I was 12. Loss at a young age is so difficult.

I wanted to pause for a moment... To recognize where I have been and what has moved me the direction I am in. Thank you for being in my life Carl. Thank you for being such an amazing gift to Patrick and I.

I know in my heart as I scatter the ashes of my aunt in Ireland, it will be a way for me to grieve for those I have lost over the years. To close the doors and move forward, knowing I have been able to find closure. I have never attended a funeral for a family member, because we have yet to have one. I will take you with me on the clouds, your dreams and cares scattered to the wind as I honor your presence in my life and greet you in the space between....

In between

Every feel like your between two huge walls and the only way out is either back the way you came which was quite a few miles back, or the way in front of you which can be deceiving. At times it appears so long you feel as though you could never make it. And other times it is so close that you miss the part where you exit and the walls are gone. I am not exactly sure where I am standing but the pressue feels pretty immense.

Here we are in the middle of the most of amazing, life changing, altering, growing, healing honoring place in our lives and we have these looming clouds. It seems to make it a little easier to deal with. But loss of any rate can be challenging. Even the loss of identity. So to have gone through this last week (which felt like a year) and come out the other side I suppose I should be happy about that. On one side my aunts cancer came back and she was not expecting it to be a good thing. Now the doctors think they can extend her life from 6-8 months to 2-3 years. Patricks aunt has cancer, his cousin passed away and he started smoking... But on the flip side we are going to Ireland for 6 weeks!

I decided I was going to quit my work study job and then was offered another one. There is definitely a pattern of sorts...

Amidst all the pain there is a sense of comradery, love, fellowship, healing, and opportunity. There are new paths opening up for me. I am thinking of focusing on folklore and watercolors. I also want to do Sean Nos singing. Yet my heart is aching and I feel like I have no time to tend to it. Why do I get the impression that I will spend the first two days in Ireland just crying and purging?

May the music play forever...

Another Awakening

There was a time in my life where I chose to tell everyone everything that happened in my world. I found that most people really did not care. I do not mean this in a negative way. Rather, I realized that we all have so much going on in our lives that we do not need to hear everyone elses B.S. on top of that. So, slowly over the years I have been resigned to keep most comments to myself. I try not to digress. I attempt to stay on point and be clear and concise.

So here is my issue. Now that I have become so used to bottling up these life moments and keeping them to myself, it is difficult to share with people without feeling like they don't care.Thank the Universe for blogging!!!

I have been in the Ireland program now for the past 9 weeks. It is just now that I am finally able to put some key points down as to how I feel about it all and where it is taking me. At first it was so overwhelming I had no clue how to digest it all. The language, the information, the history, the readings, the songs, the poetry... The constant stretching of my soul and "lens". Now I sit here after 9 weeks, two integrative essays, a response to the Famine, I dont know how many freaking songs, poems, Seminars, etc I have gone through... I have to admit I am loving it. ALL of it. Even my job at the Parking Office.

I feel like I am keeping things in. Things I need to work on... The first of which is this overwhelming sense of guilt I carry with me. Sometimes like a badge... I worry about what people think of me when I do something questionable. I feel bad about things I have no control over. The first being the fact I was raised so differently from my siblings that I got everything I ever needed or wanted and they got hand me downs. I was the uh-oh child of eight children, and the youngest.

Why do I carry this with me? Why do I spend energy worrying about things that are either out of my control. Or choices that I make that I enjoy and then feel bad for the after effect. Regardless of how great of a choice it was. I still feel guilty for closing my fucking business for crying out loud. WHY???

It actually really sucks. I have to admit it. So the question now is, How do I change this part of myself. How do I un-ravel the sense of guilt I carry with me? I suppose if I had the answer to that I could market it and make millions. hahaha

ok I digress. I need to vent and sometimes I dont know how to quite go about doing it.

Yuletide thoughts...

I was at the delivery of Finnian Michael, December 15, 2008. What an amazing experience it is to welcome a little soul into this world. The roads were so icy, as there was a layer of snow/ice on the ground. At 2 am, we rode in Dale's truck up to Olympia as I held Angie's hand during her contractions. We arrived and everything was waiting for Angie from the bed to the tub full of warm water. I couldn't help but think back to Elisia's birth. There were so many options we didn't know we had during that time. But here, everything was about Angie and little Finn. At 6:09 am he was born into this world merely inches from my right hand. I saw his little eyes first and then his nose... The miracle of birth is definitely not aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but the experience of the souls that were in the room at that moment, awaiting the arrival of this little person was a phenomenal conglomeration of energy provided to wish him well as he starts his journey here. I don't believe I ever truly appreciated that notion when I had my boo.

I watched as dad and mom coddled and coo'ed at baby Finn, knowing that my time would come. (Selfishly I was hoping sooner rather than later. :-) And after an hour or so I held this little man in my arms. For he is not a new soul, but an old soul. His eyes are earthy, dark and tumultuous, but soft and healing... His little lips are ready to speak of the ages, and teach us the lessons of our ancestors. His perfect little ears are ready to hear what the earth is speaking, hear the chaotic call of the wind, or the softness of the rainfall - gliding down to kiss the grass.

I think of all the season past where magic had been absent. Or at least that is how it has felt for me since I was 15. Time passes, things change. As I looked around at our Christmas dinner table last night, it was weird seeing everyone. The little kids aren't little anymore. My nephews are 22 and 23, my nieces are 12-18. No little pitter patter of little feet. No crying, or fit throwing. Yet when I look into their eyes I still who they were and a glimmer of who they will become.

This Christmas season has taught me humility, and just how magical it can be. There are so many things I can be thankful for this year - which of course is probably why I am so thankful. Or, I have finally reached this stage in my own journey where I can treasure each moment as it happens and passes, I can see where I have come from and where I am going... It's never easy.

My hearts desire has changed. I feel because I have allowed it to. There was a time when all I wanted out of life was to be a housewife and a mother. After Patrick and I got together, and we both learned more about his birth defect, we realized that we may never have one together. At first I was pissed! How could this happen? Then I was sad... But I began to look at Elisia as such a blessing in our lives. She not only serves as a daughter to me, but to Patrick and her Bio dad Jesse and his boyfriend Dustin. Two men in our lives that would otherwise would not know the love of a child. And as I grow older and long to hold that little baby in my arms, the universe brings along these little tiny miracles for me to watch over, care for and cradle.

Yes, I am thankful this year. But not for the car or the gifts I have received. I am thankful for the baby crying, the dogs barking, our kitties playing, my nephews and nieces becoming adults, for the love that I share with my husband, and for the possibilities that are coming up in my future... I will step on the grass of Ireland, I will roam the hills and touch the stones... My journey out of the hole has ended and I see a path before me, I am thankful for the road I am walking for as narrow as it is, the way is clear and my footing is solid...

A new beginning

My first official "blogging" space! Oh sure I have had web pages and domains, MySpace and Facebook, but here I can be completely free to express my creations, musings and meandering thoughts.

I have realized some things about myself this year. The first is something I had to realize before I could see the other things about who I am. I dislike being a massage therapist. However, I "am" an artist, an actress, a mother, a (faerie) guide-mother, a future archaeologist, a student, a wife, and meo...

Ok so where did all this Meo come from right? Well it started as a sorta intimate joke with myself. I love to play games... no not pscychological.... silly ones like seek and find, or the time management ones where you have to be an ice cream maker or flip burgers before they burn. I have downloaded and tried so many of these games that I finaly tired of making up new names to call myself and finally just started using Meo or Mio (me - oh, my-oh), or the two of them together! Thats where it begins...

When Patrick and I went to Faerieworlds this past August I was an undecorated faerie with no wings... A few friendly fae took pity on my status and equipped me with some faerie regalia! It was then that this story began to form of little Meo who went to Festival without the proper attire and met all these wonderful fae folk on the road who gave her a coin belt, a head dress and so on... When I came home, I actually began to draw what had happened with Meo and her little friends. I have about 5 pictures done in charcoal and chalk that I am going to one day make into a childrens book. Meo is literally me and what I have been through to get where I am today.... Ok more later. Don't to blog you to down on the first one.. :-)