Archive for March, 2009

To Carry-to take, to bear, to hold, to bring, to lug, to transmit, to transport, to convey, to transfer, to move, to pass on, to conduct, to relay, to contain, to include, to involve, to store, to supply, to keep (from the English Thesaurus)

As a result of my injury, my sweet family is feeling some pretty big adjustments.  The tasks that I usually have done in daily life towards maintenance of our family and our home are now meted out amongst the remaining three family members that can walk and carry things at the same time!

I am halfway through my 8 weeks of no-weight-bearing, and get around quite well on crutches, holding the right ankle above the ground and depending on my left to move me forward.  I have gotten good at being Hop Along Cassidy out of necessity!  But when you are holding yourself up with crutches and have a somewhat unstable balancing act going on, it isn’t possible to carry anything in your hands.  Having that possibility now removed, I never realized how much carrying I was doing!    

This has inspired in me a desire to examine the concept of carrying.

All moms know about carrying….we carry our babies in our bodies and in our arms and on our hips….we carry the food from the fridge to the sink and to the stove, we carry the groceries from the store to the checkout line to the car to the kitchen,….we carry our kids to school and carry their coats, their homework, their lunches…we carry our laundry to and from the washroom and then carry folded piles to the dresser drawers….we carry information from one place to another…we carry the intention of well-being for our families and our communities and our earth….we carry the well-being of our loved ones in our hearts, and we (sometimes to our detriment) carry the burdens of others simply because we care about them. 

I know that in my experience of being a woman and a mother that I see the feminine as a vessel, and that vessels are great for carrying and holding things.  Think in terms of the clay pots hand crafted by our ancient women ancestors, in a search for something to hold water and to cook in.  Think in terms of the female body’s amazing capacity to grow and nurture and carry a child within the vessel of the womb, and our arms as a vessel to cradle the baby while nursing and to rock the child to sleep.  I think in terms of the universe as a giant womb in which All Creation is held and carried.  Nothing can exist unless there is a space in which to exist, right?

I’m not suggesting that the masculine does not carry its share of things; of course it does.  This exploration is not a discourse on women or men being “better” than the other, or an argument about the roles that each should play; that seems ridiculous and a waste of time to me. 

But the concept and experience of carrying itself seems to me to originate in a feminine principle of being a holder of space, a vessel within which creation can occur.  Is this why the female of species have tended to be the carriers of home, hearth and procreation since the beginning of physical life on this planet?

I consider myself to be a feminist to the degree that I believe in equal opportunity for all regardless of gender.  If a woman wants in her heart to go for it and succeed in business and career, I say it is a free will universe and she has every right to do that.  Certainly, I feel there should not be any human-made constraints to limit her in her desire.  I am a strong woman myself, and in my early years achieved a 5 year university degree and went into the professional realm because I wanted to work and make my mark on the world. 

But as I became a mother, my sense of self has changed (and continues to!)  I saw that it wasn’t possible for there to be equal opportunity for my husband to carry our babies, nor to breastfeed them once they were born.  It was my unique role to do that due to my design.  It was his unique role to provide for us, to keep us safe and protected with a house and healthy food to eat so that I could tend to the raising of our children.  Home and hearth suddenly became very important to me.  I found myself gardening organically, canning vegetables, learning to make candles and soap, learning herbs and homeopathy and other non-invasive health modalities, learning how to heal with my hands, learning how to listen to the subtle guidance of my inner wise voice.  Having children cracked my heart open and my spirit came pouring out, looking to make up for lost time.  I began the journey to own myself as a woman and therefore an embodiment of the Sacred Feminine.

Perhaps one of the backlashes of the feminist movement is that some of us have felt we owed our allegiance to those amazing and courageous women who first stood up and said “Enough!” to being treated as second class citizens or even property at the hands of men.  I certainly respect and admire them, and know that their brave work has benefitted me and other women in the world.  I also honor that their inner journey led them to do the work they felt was right to do. 

However, in this physical world, for every action there is a reaction.  There has been a consequence for some of us.  For me, it was my belief that I should be out there conquering the world in business and making my power felt on men’s terms.  Who am I to not follow up on my fore-sisters work and pave the way for women to become “more” in this world?  Wouldn’t I be betraying them if I did not succeed in my professional life and have all of the benefits of making it in a man’s reality?  For me, the consequence of being a child of the feminist movement has been a confusing of who I really am and who I thought I should be. 

To this day I struggle with this inner part of me that pushes me to do, to make money, to have credibility, to gain notoriety, to be recognized as powerful in the man’s world. What is coming ever forward is the acknowledgment and acceptance of my role as a woman, a vessel, a carrier of the subtle mysteries of life.  I want to succeed in the woman’s world.  I want to nurture and create and hold space for my ever-unfolding.  I want to carry and nurture and hold space for the creation and unfolding of my beautiful sons, who will be a serious catch for some special women in this world once they are ready to be set free from my arms!  My true, authentic expression in this consensual reality right now is to BE the feminine.  It is a constant process of coming into greater balance within me.  I choose to give myself permission to BE this that I truly am.

My examination of my slow and steady reclaiming of my Sacred Feminine self as vessel and carrier for creation has been a constant meditation and realization since I broke my right (masculine) ankle.  My masculine side has been put to pasture for awhile, while my (left) feminine side has had to step forward, to be the one who leads.  How beautiful that my earthly body is being used as a metaphor for this balancing act, as I put my left, feminine foot forward in order to move through my day! 

The insights I am receiving are jaw-dropping, at least to me!  For 15 years, I have been reclaiming my Divine Feminine/Great Mother self, letting her move forward and through me, embodying me, letting her work be done in the world.  It is an evolving process, and one that inspires me to watch, to observe, to record the journey, and to be ever thankful for the mysterious and beautiful way that life continues to unfold.

About two weeks ago, the sun shone through after several days of rain.  The soft sea air buoyed us as we left the RV for a bike ride, the first in several days.  The boys and I had been stir crazy with the weather, and the RV gets tight in the best of times.  Our bike ride took us to the Pismo State Park, right on the coast; as we rode the monarch butterflies, which winter over here due to the mild climate, flitted across our paths, their wings infused with the light of the sun. 

I will remember this joyous bike ride with my boys for a long time, as it will be my last for several months. 

We returned to the RV to get more school work done, and as the boys worked, Peter said he was going on a ride.  I asked if I could go, too….more rather than less exercise is a good rule for me.  He welcomed me; I threw my shoes on and, a smile on my face, stepped out the door, placing my left foot on the top outer step of the RV.

Apparently, I put my heel down on the edge of what turned out to be a sandy step…before I knew what happened, I was flying.  I felt pain, but more shock of having fallen down the stairs, as I am not one who hurts myself much.  When I got to the bottom, I felt that something was wrong; besides the heart pounding from the surprise, I looked down and saw that my right foot was turned the wrong way, and the end of my tibia, the strong inner leg bone that we see as our shin, poking unnaturally through the left side of my ankle. 

I will spare you the details of my strange calm as I gave orders to my family members, the transfer to the hospital ER, the relocation of the ankle and the immediate surgery, all of which I am in the process of writing in great detail as therapeutic work.  More of note is the inner process that has been accelerated due to the whirlwind destruction of my bodily innocence and the surrender required to allow other people to help you when you are accustomed to surviving on your own. 

I have always been a very strong and healthy person, having very few accidental injuries in my life, relegated to the occasional burn or cut. Even in my rash of car accidents in my barely-present early twenties, I walked away without even a bruise.  Never having broken a bone or been to the hospital except for birthing Jess and a small cut that required stitches when I was 11, this accident ‘broke’ my vision of myself as invulnerable.  The healing at physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels that is unfolding inside me through this event is profound.  To me, that’s the juicy stuff; to me, this is where the magic is.

My rigidity in my life has held me up when there was no one else to do it; my parents were actively abusive alcoholics, and there was no safe place for me to be vulnerable.  I had to get tough to make it through my childhood, and I took that toughness with me into my growing life, perceiving through my filters of experience that the world was not a safe place.  Of course, as a result of that filter being in place, I helped create more of that belief, which reinforced my toughness.  Over time, my heart has closed except to those who have proven that I can trust them.  My tests, although unconscious, are rigorous and thorough…my tests weed out those who might make a passing grade from the die-hards.  Only those who truly and passionately love me unconditionally make it through my inner gauntlet.  I am civil to the others, but they will never know the real me, as I don’t trust them to treat me with respect and safety.

And I put myself on the line in these tests; I share myself and make myself vulnerable, then watch what they do with what I have given to them.  Some show me their trustworthiness right away by not being able to hear what I am sharing, or rejecting it outright.  Others are a little “craftier”…they listen and appear to treat my sharing with tenderness and care, but later use it against me.  I give the gift of myself to those who do not deserve my trust to prove to myself that they aren’t trustworthy.  It is a back-asswards pattern of behavior learned when a child cannot trust the two people she depends on to keep her safe in the world.  This event has brought this pattern into clear light, for which I am grateful. 

I now have a bionic ankle, complete with “golden” plate and six “golden” screws (the golden is in my mental picture so that I can accept and make friends with the foreign objects in my body).  I must remain “no weight bearing” for 8 weeks, at which point I will begin to learn to walk again.  In the mean time, I hobble around on crutches and spend a lot of time with my foot up on the couch.  Well, I was complaining about not finding the time to write…now I am writing more than ever.  The insights are coming so thick and fast I can scarcely write them all down. 

And so, in moments of extreme grace and clarity, I am actually grateful that this has happened.  Oh, I have my moments of feeling like a victim, feeling sorry for myself, feeling angry and sad….but all of those are indications of a deeper healing in myself that can occur, if I am just willing to follow the pointers to the place inside where acceptance and insight abound.   

Thank you, my right ankle, for making this sacrifice in service to the whole of me, my inner and outer community.  Like our indigenous ancestors did in holy ceremony, you offered flesh to show how willing you were to put yourself on the line in order for healing to occur on the larger level.  I humbly choose to make the most of this offering! 

“First, the greater portion of our energy must be directed toward cohering the newly emerging butterfly organism, as the caterpillar seems to be doing just fine in deconstructing itself. Secondly, if we are going to have a look at the darkness, the most helpful thing we can do is to shine the light of love and laughter on it.”

-Swami Beyondananda/Steve Baerman

I know so many of us that are getting caught in the fear of the transformation that is occurring in our world right now…people who have been training in consciousness for years and who KNOW better than to let themselves be pulled under the wave, rather than to ride on it, are struggling to keep their heads above water! 

I want to appeal to you all….those of you who knew that this transformation was coming….we have been readying ourselves for it forever!  It may not look like the way we thought it would, but it is HERE and the time is NOW to put our skills into play.  There is no time to entertain fear….it is time to be the master, the good inner grown-up, the Wise One Inside, and to say NO to the media and fear diet. 

I am not suggesting that we put our heads in the sand; it is important to acknowledge what is true and see it with neutral eyes.  But we cannot afford to let it carry us away; our focus must be on what we want to create in this world.

THE TIME IS NOW