It is Friday and we are here.
{a breath for Friday.}
What worked this week?
Having a partner in crime.
One of my favorite parts of the last two weeks of Rally (Rally!) was getting to be Yvette West, Fashion Editor! So much fun dressing up every day!
So I’d been feeling pretty worried that post-Rally me would go back to thinking that delighting in garments is Shallow And Frivolous, my two monster fears.
I don’t want to lose Yvette’s wild-and-free creative instincts! She is so playful, so spot on in her choices, so unafraid to be gorgeous, so unapologetically sexy.
My own tendency is to wear the same thing every day or live in workout clothes. Unless I’m at the Vicarage, which is the place where I give myself permission to dress as lusciously as I want. Being Yvette is like Vicarage-me times ten.
This week I partnered (partnered-in-crime? partner-in-crimed? nothing sounds right but that last one is definitely wrong!) with Agent Annabelle Swell. Every day I told her what I was wearing. This was super helpful. And kind of hot.
Next time I might…
Just say no.
Or really, remember that it is okay to say no.
Lots of things are okay! For example, how hard this learning process is.
Or how much saying no can sometimes scare me. There is lots of conditioning to undo here. It makes sense that this is challenging for me.
This week I watched myself say yes when I meant no. Several times. Often even in a row, when I was still wincing from having said the first yes. Which is exactly the opposite of what I want.
Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- It was very disorienting on Tuesday to not be prepping for Rally. Or trying to finish a million tiny things for the next Rally. A breath for letting change be good.
- Ugh action steps. They were needed this week. Except ugh action steps. Just the name, never mind the Taking Of The Action makes me want to just burrow back under the covers and sleep for a month. I tried anagramming them since anagrams are magic when I am as allergic to a phrase as I am to “action steps”. First thing to come up? Constipate. Right. Of COURSE. Other options were even worse. Panic Totes. A Septic Ton. A Tonic Pest. To Acne Spit. Basically action steps are so horrible they just anagram into more horrible. A breath for presence and for finding a better way that works for me.
- Making things congruent kicks up so much dust. Mental and emotional dust. Energy dust. It’s good that things that are done are leaving, and in the meantime the process of helping them exit is showing me a lot of things I didn’t want to see. A breath for trust and more trust.
- Last year I was at the Vicarage for rosh hashana, so I had a lot of time to get very quiet (extra quiet!) and focus on what I want in the new year. This year the holiday coincided with a dance convention so my process was more rushed, less internal. A breath for trusting in intention, fractal flowers and the deep internal knowing that seeds are seeds.
- I would like so much more sleep please! I would like to get better at taking exquisite care of this body that is my home. A breath for trust, again.
- Trust. That’s the big thing, isn’t it. Sometimes it is so deliciously easy, so astonishingly simple. And sometimes this is where I collapse. A breath for remembering truth.
- Dancing with people who are not a good fit for me to be dancing with, not advocating for myself, hurting my shoulder. See also: PATTERNS. A breath for seeing this, which is the first step.
- Inhale, exhale. Goodbye (and thank you), mysteries and hard moments of this week.
Eight breaths of good, reassuring, delight-filled.
- Spectacular dance moments this week, so many that I don’t even know how to condense it into a highlight reel. Delivering the steamiest rendition of You Give Me Fever that Portland has ever seen. My teacher’s jaw dropping when I nailed something new on the second try. I’m having fun. A breath for hard work paying off, and for the sheer joy of play.
- A hundred thousand sparklepoints for me! I said no to something without apologizing or over-explaining! Just a clear, sweet “that won’t work for me due to x, here’s what will”, and this was easy. The other person said, “oh cool how about y instead”, and that worked for me so we went with that. The entire experience was not-fraught, and I didn’t go into my Please Don’t Be Mad At Me I’ll Just Accommodate contorting patterns. Sovereignty win! A breath for experiencing how beautiful this is.
- Realizing on Tuesday that I didn’t have Rally to run or prepare for, and then realizing that I could go to a noon rumba class with the retired people. All of a sudden my sad mood switched to “see ya suckers, I’m off to rumba!”, and it was awesome. Also my god I love rumba, why do I not do more rumba. A breath for freedom.
- Tashlich. My favorite ritual of the year. Casting everything you are done with into moving water, in the form of bread crumbs. Casting. What a word. I went down to the river with Agent Mueller and Agent Em Dee, two of my most favorite people. I breathed peacefulness. I released everything that needed releasing, into the water. It was interesting to note that this year didn’t really come with regrets. It was more of a heart-noticing of the times I was not true to myself, and a full-body commitment to live in truth. A breath for letting go and for receiving.
- A visit to my friend Va and her beautiful house. Feeling inspired about color, design, a richness of textures, congruence. A breath for delight, and for the superpowers of color
- “Love more trust more” has been my sankalpa, my intention, in all things, and this is what I’m doing, both on my own and in connection with someone else, and I cannot stop smiling about how indescribably beautiful everything is. Same as last week: a breath of thank you for the right companion for this wild adventure.
- This week was full of treasure for me, in the form of useful realizations, amazing dances, moments of deep peacefulness and moments of wild sparks. A breath for This Is Right.
- Thankfulness. WALTZ BRUNCH! Four hours of dancing and smiling my face off. Bridgetown Swing this weekend. Getting better at noticing, and at receiving. Finally getting to give Marisa a thousand hugs. The notebook of wishes I made for the new year. An intensity of pleasure in my life, and this is not scaring me, and I’m not running away or trying to sabotage anything. So many lovely surprises. So many things are beautiful. Nothing is wrong. Now is not then. All Timing Is Right Timing. A full happy breath of deep appreciation in my thank-you heart.
WHAM BOOM! Operations completed.
Finished all the edits for the latest Sip Hint Learn book, it’s on its way! Big big changes at the Playground. Operation Luscious Consonance is both easier and harder than I thought, and a critical mission if there ever was one. Things are moving. Wham Boom.
Revisiting some wise important words of truth from past-me.
This post called Lost In A Tragic Ice Cream Accident. This is important stuff.
Superpowers…
Powers I had this week…
Last week I wanted the superpower of I Always Remember To Invoke Extra Superpowers, and it worked! I had this one in spades.
Superpowers I want.
I suddenly realized something this week that has never occurred to me in nearly four decades of being jewish: when we wish each other happy new year, we wish for a good and sweet year.
In one sentence. Good and sweet. Not “have a good year” or “have a sweet year”. A good AND a sweet year. This is so beautiful. What an abundant, loving wish. What a wonderful sense of plenty.
You get to have good and sweet. So then the good is even better because it is sweet, and the sweet is even better because it is good, and you aren’t greedy or selfish for wanting both, for desiring more sweetness and more good. In fact, it’s important that you get to have both.
I want all the superpowers related to that. All the superpowers of AND. The superpowers of I’d like this and also some of that. Yes.
Plenty. Delighting. Delighting in Plenty. Sweetness and PLenty. Sweetness is Valid and Important. There’s Good And Then There’s Even Better. It is Okay to Want Both. There Is More Good And More Sweetness. Receive As Much As You Like.
And someone told me that it’s energetically okay to toss our regrets in the water in the form of bread crumbs because apparently in Jewish culture fish are immune to the evil eye. I want the superpower of that! And that should work well, because I’m a fish.
Pisces superpower: No One Can Hex Me.
And more of these from last week please.
The superpower of Theatrical Spectaculars! The superpower of I get a parade! The superpower of everything…in style! The superpower of Self-Ripening Wisdom. The superpower of Everything Is Happening in a Grand Fashion because that’s how I do things, baby, like a fairground stripper! I Boldly Glow. Ablaze With Fearless Intentional Choice-Making. I Have Everything I Need. Wildly Confident, Outrageously Beautiful, Wonderfully Tranquil. I Do Not Dim My Spark For Anyone.
The Salve of AND.
This salve softens everything it touches, starting with your skin and then going deep, illuminating.
Any internal rules you might have that say you aren’t allowed to have X and Y suddenly dissolve into light, so that you are filled with your own light.
When I massage this salve into my skin with sweetness, I find myself suddenly and mysteriously filling up on permission, on amnesty.
I remember that it is okay to combine. I can have good and sweet. I can have sexy and sweet. I can have wild and sweet. I can have passionate and sweet. I can have steady and sweet. I can have all of these things at the same time, and infinitely more.
Any quality I can think of can come into the mix, can be added on with an and.
This is the salve of It Is Safe To Add An And.
This salve enhances compassion, because when you experience what it is like to gently undo false limitations, you can see your own and everyone else’s pain with so much love.
It also helps with sovereignty, and glowing boldly.
If salve does not appeal, you can have this in tea form, as a bath, cocktail, whatever works for you. Not only is there enough salve, there are also enough ways to receive it.
Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!
This week’s band comes via Ez, and it’s called Guilt Bombs. They kind of sound like a slow-motion version of The Pogues, though I heard it’s just one guy.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
I am still recommending the Emergency Get Calm, Quiet And Steady techniques, since they are keeping things good around here for me.
So I want to seed a reminder that this is a thing, and it helps, a lot. Not just with calming down in the moment but with building the kind of habits that allow you to change your relationship with whatever is scary or uncomfortable.
I hardly ever recommend these because the page is already many years old and needs rewriting. However, copywriting aside, this is still one of the best things I have ever made, by a lot. I have two boxes in my office full of the sweetest thank you notes from people, and so many of them are for this.
Come play if you like…
Join me in the comments. Some of us share hard and good, some of us say hi, or maybe we’re on silent retreat. My ritual doesn’t have to be your ritual. Whatever works for you. Almost three hundred weeks of this and there still isn’t a right way.
Everyone belongs. We let people have their own experience. We’re supportive and welcoming. We don’t give advice.
Wishing you a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day, a restful weekend and a happy week to come.
p.s. It’s fine if it’s not Friday anymore. There’s complete chicken amnesty — join in whenever you like, it’s no big deal. And I am blowing kisses to the Beloved Lurkers. I love that you are here too.
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I never knew that Action Steps made such terrible anagrams. The poor things.
Hello Friday Plus One –
The Mixed Up:
My monsters are wildly gesticulating about all the things that could go wrong with a work thing (which is lovingly anagramed to a Cooing Rug Tot, just a tiny baby of a thing). Although (and this is the good) it dawned on me that they are nervous because they want to keep doing what we are doing. This was not always the case. I think this feeling might be something like self-preservation, which is a nice thing.
Recovery from Operation: Operation. Asking for help and getting it.
Remembering all the other times my monsters thought it was The End of Times and it was not the end of time. I want to not think it is the end of times. I want to think “This is the Beginning of Times.” This is Times, and this is what happens during Times.
Hello, chicken — and! Wow! What a beautiful salve. I love it.
What worked: writing my way through distress and out to the other side.
Next time: I want to try to do thing A all the way before moving on to thing B. Not saying that I have to, not promising that I’m going to, just expressing a desire, and conducting an experiment.
Hard: An unexpected financial brush fire. Monster voices. Old patterns that do not serve my sovereignty. I am done with them; they just may not be quite done with me yet. (That’s okay. Things are shifting, and the writing is on the wall. I ought to know; I’m the one doing the writing.)
Good: I am a pattern whisperer! I dealt with the brush fire calmly and bravely, with zero drama. I wrote. I sang. I played. I read. I followed my fascinations. I discovered treasures and uncovered miracles. Oh! And I received the *best* surprise in the mail! <3 <3
I now invoke the superpower of –the Wild Card! This *and* that *and* the other, *and* anything that I need!
Sending wishes for goodness and sweetness to everyone here…
This anagraming reminds me of my favorite anagram for my name: Anal Heroin Ruin. So hilariously off-base. I adore it.
The salve of and! I want this. I want A and SC. Both in my life at the same time in wild abundance. I am willing to do the training to get to get from or to and on this.
This week was much better than last week.
The Hard:
1. Tough truth from someone I thought adored me who in fact feels very differently. Needing to be seen for my beauty.
2. So many tears.
3. Stuff about “putting myself out there,” in many forms. Three separate times in which I’ve felt ridiculously silly for loving gardening as much as I do right now.
4. I thought that maybe the plants the painters squished would bounce back, but it looks like I lost the whole bed. The whole bed.
5. You guys, I am so tired of washing dishes I could scream. Now that I’m the one cooking, as well as the one washing dishes and the one cleaning the kitchen more generally, it’s like I never get to leave it. And our kitchen is gross. Mustard yellow and poorly constructed and rotting…
I want to remodel it already! And for this remodeling to include a dishwasher!
The Good:
1. *I* see my beauty and goodness. A few years ago even if someone said “you’re so sexy and beautiful and I love being seen with you,” I’d either scoff or ask “are you sure?” One thousand million times.
Now, someone says “listen I feel terrible about this but I think maybe I don’t think you’re very sexy because of something I can’t quite put my finger on about how you look and how you present yourself and what other people might think about it.” and I’m like “what interesting information about you and your process. I absolutely know I’m sexy and gorgeous and that the people who are right for me will see that, so you’ve got some time to figure this out but if your feelings don’t change then I’ll take my sexy gorgeous self elsewhere.”
And I don’t even feel that anxious to find an elsewhere because I’m enough for me right now.
So that’s been pretty big.
2. I’ve got my bedroom gloriously to myself and I get to arrange it exactly how I want. Also it’s finally cold enough for my big heavy comforter (especially now that I’m sleeping by myself), and it is delicious! Such sweet sleep, such a peaceful calm place to retire each night.
3. Got to go to the most spectacular play last Friday. I cried and cried. It was amazing.
4. An arborist finally chose our house on ChipDrop and I got about had 10 yards of free wood chips! I also accidentally discovered a brick patio buried in my backyard. So I have an abundance of materials for all my projects. The yard looks AMAZING with cedar paths winding through it.
5. I started a meal plan, and that combined with our first CSA share and our basil harvest (and subsequent pesto-making) meant so much interesting delicious varied food this week. And no moments of “oh shit what do I cook now?”
6. The compost got to 140 degrees! I have learned how to compost, in other words. So exciting!
7. I spackled all the holes in the walls and ceilings. A few from us, most from the previous owners. They all still need paint, but even as is it’s super nice to have the holes patched. Solid walls for winter. Solid walls as I work on my boundaries.
Everything I’m reading from you is more and more perfect. I wrote a thing about Rosh Hashana and how it’s been the most quietly transformative time of my life.
And “good AND sweetness” yes perfect. This is why I love ampersands so much that I got one tattooed on my body. the power of AND is such an important one for me.
Bon samedi, y’all!
Hard:
1. [proxy] Instincts screaming Not My Bus.
2. [literal] Bus pass failed to work, and the subsequent running around to sort it out.
3. How to get to where I want *and* get enough sleep?
4. The feeling-taken-for-granted wahs.
5. Sunk-cost fallacy v. moving on cage match the nth.
6. Rejections. Part of da biz, but man, getting them still bites.
7. Is it so much to want not to be overcharged at [M] and [K]? Oy!
8. A situation that is so not OK that I want to shoot one of the parties involved.
Good:
1. Plans in place = bus shelter
2. Some seriously splendid meals. [Potato gnocchi. Duck burger. Mmmm…]
3. Prevailing over puzzles.
4. Pulling together presents.
5. Betting correctly on Fed Biz, the horse that was 2nd in today’s Awesome Again Stakes. I loved the description of him as “versatile and dangerous.”
6. Picked Tonalist to win Gold Cup, too.
7. There may not be cukes, but one of the vines is now a good foot above the library windowsill. I’m doing something right…
8. Put together an anklet (iguana since 2011) and fixed an earring. Go me!
Warm wishes to all y’all.
Hard:
Pain, pain meds with side effects, complications.
Leading me to neglect MrB’s dressing changes and he can’t do it himself.
Not being as assertive about my needs and my care as I am about his.
SOG Socks stinking up a room in my house and I can’t deal with it now.
Things I need to work out not working out; things being harder than I expected; feeling irritable and vulnerable.
Good:
Calls from son.
Books.
Anticipation.
Ideas and possibilities.
Perfect weather.
Internet resources that I’ve just discovered, that distract me somewhat.
Brief periods of not-pain that I’m using well.
Chicken!
The hard:
– all the stuff that came up around Another New Opportunity, and flapped around my head so that I found it very difficult to take the Opportunity (see Latest Post for gory details…)
– so many signals passed at danger. How do I learn to believe them?
– not telling people turned out to be a terrible idea.
– no brain left at all.
– beating self up for not taking care of self. Shome mishtake shurely?
The good:
– sorting my finances out, so now I have some.
– silver jewellery class. Not having to be brilliant from the word go. Concentrating so hard on making a lovely thing that all the stress went away.
– EliseM has put new shinies up and they are so so beautiful and some of them are about monsters and some are about mermaids.
The hilarious:
– natural palaeo custard. (Just one guy!)
– Tom Lehrer concert in Copenhagen, ?early sixties.
What worked:
– the Emergency Calming Techniques. First aid for the battered self!
– the angels. The angels almost always work. I had forgotten that there is one who gives thanks for new opportunities.
– wearing the ring that told me I didn’t need to be perfect.
Cluck cluck cluck.
Guilt bomb! This is hilarious because 1. GILT BOMB. I’ll take a few of those for dull moments and 2. GUILT BALM. I could use a 55-gallon drum of that. In fact, I’ll just label it and put it on the sidewalk for all to help themselves from.
I’m on my way with a small jar to collect some Guilt Balm. And maybe some Gilt Balm.
action steps:
catnips toes
tiptoes scan
set captions
Whispers of delight and becoming and joy. Love and trust! So much.
sunday chicken!!
oh there is sooooo much!
what wprked this week: best practices, the Libra list, excellent well tending, the coven of the trade winds
the sucks:
-work was hard and i had a hard time staying as ofucsed as i wished. a breath for shame and discontent
-my husband threw a really big heavy shoe at me, and it hurt so hard and brought me back to such an ancient place of pain that it made me flu-ish 4 days later.
-my inability to move things forward
-etc
but so much sparkle:
-beautiful weather, days of it
– mabon
-having one last perfect apple off the tree for Mabon. Thank you, past-Me! what a gift
-druid mabon was nice, celt recon mabon was nice, hostessing an awesome wonderful mabon with dinner with beloved altar-sisters at my house
-getting ready for Mabon circle was juice and more juice. so much pleasure here
-this whole weekend was about enjoyment! so needed
9/21 to 9/26
Ready…set…Chicken!
The Hard – The Dude’s contract ended. A reminder that I’m better at reading Signs of This than he is. Same day as $$$$ car repairs.
The Good – Same day as I won a Kindle Fire. Reminder: If I can navigate Portland by bus and foot, with the help of advance intel, Garmin and cell phone, I can follow the YouTube tutorial and figure out how to use it.
The Ummm, What? – Okay, The Dude’s news felt like a punch in the gut, and I owe myself a good cry, but I’m not feeling the Anxiety events like this caused in the past. I may have even had panic attacks. I’m hoping the lack of anxiety isn’t disassociation from my feelings or a Sign of severe mental problems. Just because it is Unusual does not mean it’s Bad. Explorers report no sign of the old Anxiety. Scientists are monitoring my vitals for anomalies. I’ve put out a Be on the Lookout with all my Fictional Police Agencies, but if the Anxiety and monsters have moved off-planet and left no forwarding address, I’ll wave them bye-bye and Good Luck!
And in a salve! Beautiful, and it smells so good!
I’ll be using the Guilt Balm to repel the G(uilt) Bug and to heal its bites.
Meanwhile, I’ll take the Wise Man’s advice, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”. I feel like exploring or making new Openings.
It’s G(u)ilt Bug.
Le poulet de mardi!
Les’hards…
* being asked what I want. Discovering what I want. Feeling the fear that co-arises with desire. Feeling the desire itelf.
* intensity. I crave it, I run from it, I seek it, I blank on it. Lots of sensation, lots of numbing. The numbing takes time and leaves me energetically flat and prone to stuck.
* When I’m not numb though I spend a lot of time pacing back and forth inside my cage, a jaguar or leopard or something, scratching at the walls, menacing and on the edge of violence. This flavour of intensity is frightening to me. My world is not supportive of me undergoing the metamorphosis that feels imminent. (Yet.)
* giving myself permission to be the shape I am.
* I so want to be loved. I am so prepared to contort in order to be ‘loved’. I am so ready to be useful and believe that doing so will buy me love. I am so ready to make myself acceptable, smaller, less so I don’t frighten away ‘love’. This is a deep pattern. It is a way I participate in caging myself though.
* germs. Snot. Grizzly kids. Money swings and roundabouts, makes me feel a little dizzy and graspy. Sooooo much laundry! I need to cull. Preparing food and keeping the kitchen sane is not my favourite thing and it never ends. Ugh, crap to pick up off the floor and put away. Again. And it’s all so freeeeeeaking boring I fear I might die of it. I understand it’s a sacred trust, I just want less of it.
Les goods
* being asked what I want. Discovering what I want. Feeling the fear that co-arises with desire. Feeling the desire itelf.
* giving myself permission to be the shape I am. Claiming my space, my shape, my form, my power. Releasing shrinking, apologising, contorting patterns as much as I can.
* movement in the right direction in the love-sex-romance-connection-intimacy station
* star-gazing and sweetness, oh my yes.
* generally more energised than has been the case the last couple of months. Went to the doctor and am getting some bloods done to work out if there are pragmatic things that could help get my body ship-shape.
* concluding negotiations that feel fair and reasonable without the usual palaver and drama.
* discovering someone believes I still owe them a whole lot of energy when I had believed them to have forgiven the ‘debt’. But no. This is very useful information to have!
* spaces to experience Not Boring quite often. Oh, my, yes. Turn me on!
* feeling crap forces one to look at what is not right, and encourages one to change that shit up a little, to get into alignment. Thanks depressies, you’re a doll……………. Clarity is good though. And here’s to interesting times ahead!
Au revoir, mes poulets <3