a couple of mama and baby rocks 🌊🌈🌿 this was my favorite spot in all of Puerto Rico. This lush little charco on the Rio Mameyes was deep in El Yunque's rainforest. We rock hopped for a bit to get to here and enjoyed time alone with the steward spirits who take watch. The waterbed of the Rio Mameyes glimmers with pyrite while it just teams with wildlife-- tons of birds, fish, butterflies, dragonflies, and lizards. It couldn't have been more perfect for our last full day in rainbow land 😍😍
love letter to a room
love letter to a room: it sounds insane, I know, so stick with me
This room has been there through important passages in my life. It has brought stability, strength, and place when I needed safety to rest in to-- when I needed to connect to something deeper within myself
I have met many Monicas in this room
I have been a little puppy curled up at the feet of the Ancient Ones in this room. I have felt their deep satisfaction. Their exhaling "ahhhhhh yessssss", a sound that vibrates the world. A knowing that the work we do in this room is the good work
I have seen visions of my life in Ancient Egypt as a gatekeeper to deeper realms in time and space-- the magic of that realm was shown to me in this room. In deep meditation I saw the doorway open. I saw my role. I saw where in my life I am still playing shepherd
I have embodied mucus in this room. I took on the stretchy-ness of karmic debris. A huge loogie that sticks to my lifetimes and links them all together through old patterns that stretch back. Ones that I refuse to dry up
The things that have been coaxed-ripped-sung-sucked-rattled out of me in this room have lead to the most transformational shifts of my life
The Angels and Animals, the Demons and Dieties, the Grandmothers and Grandfathers who have all acted as witness to my shedding 🙏 holy shit I see you
I found myself in deep gratitude about this room's four walls, ceiling, and floor yesterday. The intense grounding this room provides me allows work I would NEVER/could NEVER imagine
Yesterday working with my mentor and wise wizard @brett.bevell brought me to a new place in my journey with this room
The shamanic dreamwork we did shifted every single one of us in profound ways. We held each other with reverence. We played in each others dreams. We trusted the messages that came through. We chose to heal ourselves and therefore we healed each other
I felt changed by the honesty in the eyes I met-- a spirit connection that I deeply miss being a mom who's life is baking and baby
I was left knowing that this room is here to bring all of us together to transform everything 🔥🔥 And to the steward of the space, I love you. Thank you for providing
antietam: stories of the land
Day of the Dead: Antietam
I heard a call that said something was for me at Antietam. I listened. We went.
The violence is embedded in the land. The cries of the dead are still there-- just existing on another frequency. Like turning the dial of a radio-- from static to station-- you can still hear them.
23000. Died. Injured. Missing.
We walked the corn field where the bloodiest battle took place.
The field had just been reaped. Knowing what happened on that land brought a different context to the harvest. The crushed stalks and red cobs read like fallen bodies and blood. We saw the violence in it.
This dirt has been drenched in blood.
Although we heard nothing but silence and wind, we knew how deafening it must have been to take it in. What it must have been to hear so many men screaming for help or being with their agony. Understanding it conceptually is so different than having a role as it plays out.
There is a sycamore tree by the Burnside bridge that is called a "witness tree" because it is what remains after everything else has gone.
The tree was young when the battle happened. It witnessed 600 people get killed in near point-blank range. It watched as the bodies got stacked and the water ran red.
There is a place in the tree where it splits-- one trunk divided into two. The division that happened between the North and South played out in the nation, played out in this tree. It may have been whole once but death kept it forever divided. Maybe it decided on that day-- the bloodiest day in US history-- to change course.
There are record keepers among us. They still hold the stories of the land. They mark severe passages in time. They are vortexes.
I'm left wondering, what happens to places like this?
The impact and blow is obvious the minute you walk the land. The brutality is forever linked to the place (and weirdly juxtaposed by the gorgeousness of rolling hills and its resting place between mountain ranges). It felt haunted by memory and sadness. The depth and breadth of it all.
A living prayer for remembrance and a grateful thanks to our friend @tdotgrott for the encouragement and love he shares for our history
the timeline has to play out
Happy 90th Papa: this man is responsible for nurturing the healer in me.
He's responsible for birthing a resistance by bringing in people who could change the course of our family's karma.
Work he chose to do with my mother and me in this life, and my daughter in spirit. We are following in his footsteps to clean the stain of incest from our family line.
I know this is intense shit. I'm sorry I'm writing this. I need a witness to it all. I need to air it out.
Whatever is going on feels like the purge of many lifetimes-- many incarnations.
It's like I'm going through a vast file cabinet that reaches so far back in time that it's beginning can barely be seen.
I'm working through our documents one by one. Assessing. Destroying. Cleansing. Rewriting.
Our mythology goes like this: I saved his life. I was what he lived for when he was at his sickest. He was redeemed through his love for me. After he died, he became my baby. After he died again he brought through my other baby. All in an effort to facilitate a massive shift in our line. To move the fucking world.
But I'm seeing the limits.
All that love wasn't enough to save him from his self-destructive impulses or a history of trauma that goes so far back and so deep that he imploded from the pain and secrecy of it all.
Tonight I realized I've been carrying the weight of my role as his healer throughout my life. I've been responsible for not saving him and keeping him alive. All that unprocessed pain is reflected right back at me in losing Callum.
I take on the burdens of others to help them heal-- to help carry their load. I don't know how to say no when I need to or give the burden back because I blame myself for not BEING ENOUGH to save him. I don't step into my full power and take responsibility for myself bc I'm playing out a pain pattern locked within our family.
How this relates to Happy Belly? I took on the role of healer to continue the unfinished work. Food is the vehicle because it was my papa's overindulgence that both soothed his heart and killed his heart.
Spirit says: we can't save anyone from themselves, the timeline has to play out, get ready for something new.
This is my legacy ✊
life's a bitch and then you die
"life's a bitch and then you die": my dad used to say this all the time.
I used to laugh when he would say it. Then he died and it seemed like a living mantra-- some weird wisdom he'd been telling himself everyday to prepare for his future. He really did have a "fuck it" kind of attitude and a brain aneurysm took him instantaneously.
.
"..and then you die."
.
Today is a decade since he died. A DECADE.
Time is really fucking with me. Ten years feels like both an instant and an eternity.
The pain isn't so sharp anymore, but the vastness is still there.
There are memories I choose to not spend much time with: remembering the phone call my Aunt gave me to tell me what happened still brings me to my knees and totally twists up my stomach; remembering the dream I had a few weeks before he died where he told me he was going to die-- thought that shit was a normal expression of anxiety, not a premonition; and the way his ashes felt in my hands when I let them go at a sacred site in Scotland-- remembering those little bits of bones passing through my fingers cuts straight to my heart.
Not sure why I'm sharing these intimate bits, but this is where I'm at today 🤷♀️
.
So I made a decision this morning to listen to my sweeter memories and recreate my most favorite meal that my dad would make when I would spend the weekend with him: paper bag potatoes and a cheeseburger under the broiler.
He fried the potatoes until they were golden. Strained them before throwing them in a paper bag. He would sprinkle in salt and shake the bag up to catch the excess grease. The beef patties would go under the broiler with a sprinkle of garlic powder and salt. As soon as they were done he would throw a single slice of American cheese on them and wait for it to melt. We would eat them side by side at the table-- on potato rolls, just a little bit of ketchup, some pickles, and a glass of Polar soda.
Recreating this I was reminded that cooking is all about transformation and magic: simple ingredients, methodical preparation, and a focused intention is all you need to create the ceremony and honor your ancestors.
I love you Daddy, thank you for feeding me, and visiting us often❤
