A breath for these tough times

Sending out extra wishes of Safety & Sanctuary for everyone in the path of the hard things, what a scary time we are in, inhaling and exhaling, for compassion, strength, courage, swift and steady miracles.

Announcement / last chance for Emergency Calming Down Techniques

I’ve been reeling hard lately in some cursed combination of heartache, numbness, political anxiety, winter stuff and some wild panic episodes.

Have been holding on (for dear life) to my Emergency Calm The Hell Down Techniques from a long time ago, and it’s been helping.

I am giving away a copy of these (ebook + audio recordings) to anyone who gives any sum of money to the appreciation funds / discretionary fund in the hopes that we can all keep practicing together, for each other and for the collective, and also for ourselves in these scary times. ❤️

Light, seeds, clues, hints, ingredients, experiments

Here we are

Here we are. A breath for being here. All the more meaningful when we do this in scary, unsteady times. Arriving. Hand on heart. Settling in.

What are we up to? Dropping in seeds, clues, hints, ingredients, experiments and whispered wishes.

Depositing them into the cauldron of 2026.

Come play if you like, low stakes, no pressure!

A method, if you want to try it

Instead of naming wishes for the year or resolutions or things to try, I am trying to stay playful this week and do my entry for the year in the form of story and free-association.

In other words, I am naming things that are currently on my mind, and then doing a little exploring with whatever comes up until a wish or a quality or a clue emerges.

Maybe some seeds of light! Some sparkle is welcome, into the cauldron it goes.

Whatever comes up that feels meaningful or compelling or intriguing in a good way can be or become an ingredient.

Anything is a possible ingredient

Anything can go into the wishing cauldron of 2026, let’s infuse this year with beautiful surprises.

You are welcome to try on this method too! Actually I was thinking I might do a class on this? Maybe an afternoon gathering online?

It’s a fun way to play at the edges, kind of like arriving at the wishes we want to wish via proxies.

Wishing through story-telling. Winding our way into the place where our wishes reside.

Red foxes, all in a row

I had a dream that was not really a dream but a vision, which is to say, I am positive that I was awake but it felt like a dream.

It was the middle of the night. I woke up. I had the sensation that I was waiting for something.

A man spoke, one word, in a language I don’t recognize. I said, “I don’t understand.” He said the word again.

Then a series of red foxes jumped across my bedroom in front of me, they were almost drawn, a bit stylized, but moving, jumping. Red foxes. In a row.

It felt benevolent: not scary, not alarming, not distressing. Just unexpected and a little sweet. Taken by surprise, but not in a bad way.

This is all true and not just true in the sense that a good story is true; also true in that it happened, I was there.

This has happened before (we’ve been here before and: we’ve never been here before)

Something very similar happened in the summer of 2020, in Arizona, but it wasn’t foxes, it was another animal, and that experience was more jarring and unsettling, it shook me up.

That same week I went out for a hike and got stung on the back of the neck by a giant wasp, this was in the Buenos Aires wildlife refuge in Arivaca, and my body reacted like it had been poisoned.

Then I spent most of the next two weeks sleeping it off, delirious.

Get the point?

Get the point? Not yet. Fox medicine.

Show me what you’re about, vision-medicine and poison-medicine. More gently this time, if you can.

The dose makes the poison, and maybe the poison is also the cure. Maybe. We’ll see.

Meanwhile back at the Get The Point Ranch…

Back in the present time. This week. On New Year’s Day I went hiking at City of Rocks and it was glorious, and then I got stung on the face by something I couldn’t see. Nothing was there but I still got stung.

The next morning I woke up and felt a lump on my forehead, about half a golf-ball in girth and maybe two quarters in diameter. It was alarming, and also familiar, the same size lump I had on my neck that summer in Arizona after the wasp sting.

Right to the point, of something

As they say, if I had a nickel for every time I have a spirit vision then get stung by something and have a strong allergic reaction, I wouldn’t be rich but I would have two nickels. It’s a fairly striking coincidence.

Right to the point, and the point being poison right to my head, or my brain stem.

Get the point? Maybe. I’m certainly trying.

Poison recognizes poison

Something about poison recognizing poison. Game recognizes game? Like that, kind of.

I have this theory that is still only half-baked, but…

What if there is something in me that needs to exit?

For example: trauma residue, possibly related to a specific traumatic event that happened recently. Or maybe a habit-pattern of the mind, or a way of being in the world.

It is time for something to exit

Okay, let’s say that whatever it is needs to exit, and I am not doing the work to help it be released.

Which could be because I am still operating from within trauma response.

Or because I am too busy and distracted with all the other life stuff to focus the necessary amount of attention towards noticing and releasing something poisonous to me that is circulating inside my body or my life

A chain of events, maybe, a process

So then I have a vision that is a clue, and then I get poisoned in such a way that I cannot do anything other than engage in intense rest, and focus on healing practices to move the poison out of my body…

And maybe this is a way of moving the other stuff out as well at the same time.

Sure, again, maybe. I don’t know.

Keeping it moving

Get the point? I sure did, good point. Right in the forehead.

I’m getting it, slowly but surely. And then getting it out. Keeping it moving.

The vision is what gets me to pay attention.

Then the dose of poison gets me to initiate the much-needed rest protocols and trauma recovery protocols that I wasn’t putting into play even though they were indicated. Yes?

It’s an idea, I’ve been mulling on it while in this state of sleepy soft focus.

What if I can perceive this as something other than an attack? Is that an option. Again, maybe.

How does this relate to New Year’s experiments/ resolutions / practices?

I am really liking this sort of meandering practice of walking through what happened this week, and what I perceive to be true or real or meaningful in that, and just sort of feeling into what’s there.

And then letting that inform my wishes and practices, because that’s what’s on my mind.

What is on my mind and what wishes are revealed through this wandering through the rock formations?

I want… (what do I want)

I want to be an intimidating desert assassin who is unfazed and unperturbed by a scrape, a sting, a dose of poison, an unexpected something or other. What if I don’t even perceive it as an attack, and just take the medicine that comes and interact with it in a curious and attentive way? Maybe!

And I want to be the laconic cowboy who is not in a hurry, and all detours are part of the experience, and sometimes there is an overlook, and sometimes there is a sunset, and sometimes there is a healing.

And I want to be the fox who is lithe, sleek, clever, fortuitous, aware. And I want to be the cactus and the bee and the rattlesnake, and carry my own generative poison doses as a form of self-protection and self-treasuring.

And I want to be the clear lake, reflecting what is, calm, steady, serene.

And I want to be the rambling rock formations, wise and funny and majestic all at the same time, at home.

Tell me more!

Okay, so I have been investigating FOXY fox-related clues, specifically about camouflage protection medicine, going undetected and undercover. What does it mean to be both adaptable and strategic, when is it useful to be invisible?

I have also been investigating clues about stinging, poison, doses, when is it useful to take a small dose of poison, etc.

And I have also been sitting with this idea and letting it percolate that maybe I was in the right place for the right dose, and that it’s good to deal with my boundary issues this early in the year, since they were going to come up anyway.

Inviting in some spikiness, with intention

I asked the labyrinth in Tucson about these themes, about poison entering and exiting, about what needs to be cleared out of my system, about all the recent boundary issues that have come up and are asking for my attention.

And it told me that I should look to the cactus friends all around me, and admire their spiky spines and their clear boundaries.

It is okay to be prickly to protect yourself. In fact that might be the opposite of co-dependence and fawning and things that don’t work.

Sometimes you have to start there. Try the opposite of what you have been trying. See what happens, go from there.

And also, yes, it is okay to have protective mechanisms in place, just like how it is okay and useful to have trauma healing protocols, and to initiate them whenever you happen to think of them, not just in an emergency. May the spiky pointy poison tips be their own healing, may it all be a healing.

I am thinking about BEGIN AGAIN

Not just in the context of new years but also in all my practices. There are so many available and possible moments of RESET RESTART and BEGIN AGAIN.

A good practice has lots of moments to check in and say okay, here I am, what do I need, what would help. Begin again.

Got poisoned? That’s exciting. Begin again. Slept for eleven hours? Way to go, babe, good resting. Begin again. Got overwhelmed? How very human and relatable. Begin again.

A breath for recognizing that resetting doesn’t mean things went wrong, it means we are consciously engaging with this moment right now and how we are feeling in it.

I am thinking about PRAISE

PRAISE PRAISE PRAISE including praising myself for re-learning any lesson that I thought I had already learned, good job, begin again and another Begin Again, and cascading Begin-Agains!

No need to berate myself here. Am I back to square one or is that my perception? And if we are? Alright then!

Hello square one, my favorite square, we meet again, and this time from a slightly new vantage point…

My friend Anna recently reminded me that TIME itself is an ingredient, a vital one — in bread-making, in geology, in life experience, in healing. And so I am also placing this concept and reminders of it into my cauldron of wishes for 2026.

I am thinking about trusting and not trusting, and being with what is

Maybe I can get better at trusting time, and praising myself for trusting time or for being where I am, even if that’s in a moment of not trusting anything.

Like I said, these are precarious-feeling times and it is very reasonable to not be feeling trust. We are all processing a lot of trauma, and a chunk of mine got revealed this week while I was sleeping off some poison.

Can I add PRAISE here too, praise for showing up and praise for noticing and praise for wishing and praise for existing and praise for trying? And if that feels too challenging, or I am working through too much poison to access praise, then it’s just a LIGHT SEED of an idea that can go into the cauldron.

Time and light-gathering and shadow-recognizing and patience and some sweetness. Brewing up good things for the year, in whatever form they take, may each healing experience come in with a little more softness….

Is there anything else I need right now

Rest. Play. Comfort. A renewed devotion to pleasure and practice.

Thinking about what sustains and supports. Thinking about when to sleep it off and when to jog/shake/dance/move, and following the pull of what feels true for right now.

I am going to tell more stories and see what else emerges or wants to be named, and either seeded or released. And I am going to think about ways we can keep playing.

Revealed

My work is cut out for me, revealed by both the poison and by the antidotes. Like Poison Ivy, maybe I am more powerful now, or maybe my powers are enhanced by this attentiveness to letting a poison move through me. The victory is in the venom.

We’ll see. The work is the work either way. Can I bring a playful, curious, lighthearted approach to this project?

A breath for all of this, and for finding (not forcing, just finding) the sweetness in the spikiness, what is beautiful in being well-boundaried?

May it be so, or something even better

Here’s to choosing life and aliveness, and being here, even when it is so fucking hard (and often it is), and to learning about ourselves, and finding some sparks if we can, or staying receptive to future sparks if we can.

I love you, I love that you read my thoughts here, thank you for that. It means a lot to me.

Let’s source some wild joy, some loving clarity, or whatever is needed most, let’s play.