secret babies

When I was 15 or 16, I started getting into the concept of natural birth and midwifery. I read everything I could find, which at that point, around '88 or '89 (no internet) were mostly hippie books from the 70's and 80's from the library. I found Conscious Conception and Hygieia, written by Jeannine Parvati Baker. Even back then I was a total researcher, and I wrote to everyone I could write to, asking for more info! I began a written communication with Jeannine and worked through the first lesson of her womancraft course, which was basically autobiographical inquiry. I think at that point I was 17. She responded deeply to everything I wrote, and told me I was her youngest student. I still have that work, and it is a precious gift. Jeannine was a guide and a teacher to me through all of my pregnancies and births and my life, she was and still is a huge influence. In 2005 my family and I took a summer trip out to Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and California, and we visited her on her deathbed. Me and my husband and my children sat on her bed and talked about kabbalah and she vented and looked into my baby's face. We sat with her and I thanked her for imparting her wisdom. She died a few months later.
Jeannine wrote Hygieia with Tamara Slayton. She was another inspirational woman (who also died young); I didn't know that much about her except that she was in Jeannine's circle and I knew she created the Menstrual Health Foundation, which made the cloth menstrual pads I got from my health food store when I was a teenager and proudly soaked up my blood with. I know she was powerful. She touched many. Last night, under an intuitive inspiration, I was doing some research on menarche rites of passage--I looked up Tamara because I had heard that she created a guidebook of sorts about coming into teenager-hood. I was shocked to find out that Tamara got pregnant when she was 15 and relinquished her child. It comes full circle. I read her book probably when I was 15. I think my mother was 15 when she got pregnant with me. So many lives were begun in secret, secrets underlie the lives of so many people that are crucial in my life. Its mindblowing.

my future present potential.

I feel my potential to be successful.
I feel the tug of how great I could be.
I see my limits but see how I can shine past my limits and grow them bigger.
Everything seems possible right now.

I had time to myself today and spontaneously broke out into a yoga progression in my bathroom in front of my mirror. I want to feel connected. I imagine my connection to everybeing and feel it. Feeling centered as my purpose; I feel purposeful right now.

reading tonight

i opened the art of possibility and read for a while. i feel connected, like i have a good friend in the book reminding me what i have known. my perception is so limited and i have the opportunity to perceive something other/greater at any point. it feels freeing (and a responsibility).

me in this time-space.

taking it all in.
love. hate. the range of emotions.
this dimension as a limited range of energetic frequencies.

i am more of who i am when i write.

precious

I saw Precious the other day.
I can't get the images out of my head.
I knew I needed to see it, even though I'm so sensitive I usually keep myself away from really disturbing media.

The fictionalizing of a story is so powerful because it lets you get up close and personal in a way that can't really happen if the people being portrayed are real. I feel like that about this blog--since my name is attached there's only so much I can say. I'm hyper aware of the limitations here.

I say what I can say.
I am thinking of the movie. Appreciating my life. Wondering how it is possible for my life and lifestyle to exist when so many people are suffering so hard. Its hard to swallow.

catching the flow

I heard that this woman who is an acquaintance of mine is a musician--when she looks at notes on paper, she can hear the music in her head. She said that sometimes just looking at sheet music makes her cry; I assume she can hear the music in her heart. I was thinking about that and was trying to imagine what it must be like to play in an orchestra, totally feeling the music, not thinking about it at all, just completely feeling it together with all the other people playing.
I am such a solitary person. I want to know what its like to share beyond mind with a group. My closest experience was being at grateful dead shows as a young woman, dancing within the crowd, feeling the music move my body around the others who were sharing the experience with me.
I ran yesterday for longer than I ever have. I felt like my breath was slipping and I disengaged from my mind and let the thoughts go and broke through the fear of not having enough breath...and ran (actually jogged). It was good. I thought about what it would be like to run in a group, or to run in a marathon and be surrounded by others running, experiencing their version of the same.

Sometimes yoga is like that for me. One of the things I like the best about my class is that there are always at least 15-20 people who show up. We are a group, we flow through the movements together. I definitely feel the combined energy and I draw on it to push me through when my mind says its too hard. I draw on the power to disengage my mind and just let my body flow.

I want to know how to catch the flow in general in life...

tgiving fallout

I'm realizing bit by bit what makes me numb out.
Abundance of sensory stimuli is a big one.
Emotional expectations from people (family!) is another big one.

I just start feeling disconnected and I don't feel emotion, I'm like on autopilot.
I realized the day before thanksgiving until now when everyone left my house that I was in that zone, being super productive but emotionally shut down.

Thanksgiving is such a complex social/emotional environment--there are so many people operating mostly unconsciously from their childhood experiences superimposing their expectations on everyone else. An intricate web of wants and needs paralleled by active playing out of the satisfaction or un-satisfaction of those wants and needs, with a layer of 'nice-ness' on top of everything.
In those situations I only know how to go mostly inside and be outwardly good and nice but actually not feel. Its fucked up, I don't know how to be genuine when I feel such expectation.

It feels scary to admit not being genuine. I know alot of people hold high expectations for me, but I do for myself more than anyone else does of me. What happens when I let myself down? Is that where the split happens and I detach and retreat into my inside world?

That world inside of me is vast--I have lived there for alot of my life.