The Saga of Christina – Finding Herself - Finding Family

Episode 15 and a half – Finding out Dan is a fine man

The current mindset of the writer is verging on morose. Blindsided by a disloyal husband, when I swore for decades I’d never marry, yet was stupid enough to over ride that bit of wisdom to immediately be kicked in the teeth for it, within weeks of the override. However, having been given my walking papers, I am now wild and free, on the street, after calling him on his dishonesty backfired and instead of begging for forgiveness, the unfortunate soul told me to get the hell out.

With 40+ years of Army under his belt and all the resultant Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome on top of it, he is due to retire out. The counselor at the Military Family Resource Centre (MFRC) told me its common for the ‘member’ to act irrationally, even become dangerous. Well, my husband is as irrational as they come now, and I’ve been told that since he returned from 2 months away on assignment elsewhere, on Sunday, I should steer clear of him and find other places to stay until calmer heads prevail.

So, since I’m the one that is feeling like I’ve just had open heart surgery as an outpatient, I am honouring myself while I wait for him to clear out for a few days so I can pack, by spending  time with the people in my life who are important to me. Since I am being informed that I am losing my vehicle as well, I am making the most of my time as a set adrift soul by travelling between the homes of my various children and friends who need me themselves, or who are there for me.

The first night, I was caught in a huge traffic jam for hours and wound up driving past an accident scene where folks were having a worse day than I. And between leaving for the highway and arriving at my destination, my hostess informed me that her beloved dog, Serena, had a stroke and had to be put down before I got there. Did we ever need each other to get through that night!

The second night, was spent on Saltspring, where a loving daughter held me as I cried and who bolstered me with promises of help, of a place to stay to get through the next day. Grace reassured me, talked me down off the mountaintop of doom and gloom as that was all I could feel, my sails ripped from my masts, my hull smashed out from under me. She reminded me that I’d been trying to lose weight and that I’d lost a good 198 lbs.

The third night was spent in the company of Avona and her sister Lynda, a single mom with two cute and cantankerous little boys. It was so lovely to be able to stay on the couch and hear the sounds of a normal little family in their mundane day to day routines. I got lots of hugs, spent some one on one time with Avona, getting more and more grounded by the hug, and the next day, started the decision of where to go by sunset.

At the risk of being fragile to a son who doesn't understand what his mom is up against, I bit the bullet and headed up to Qualicum Bay to spend a day with my son, Dan. I didn’t know what to expect, but Grace had said that she and Dan had been talking about me and he was looking forward to seeing me up his way for a visit. With Mr. WronG bowing out, he had become the androcentric male of the family and I wanted time with him, in spite of the risk of being misunderstood or having my feelings tramped upon, as he had been famous for, in years previous as he was growing up.

 When I got there we texted a bit about how to get to a local rock quarry where there is no traffic and I was pretty safe to camp. He wasn’t able to have a house guest because he was couch surfing up there himself, staying with his best friend while there was some animal sitting for him to do so the next best thing was to help me set up a camp nearby. I was hesitant and slightly fearful. The quarry was vast and multilayered and overgrown. In my sad shape, I felt all the fear and anguish I’d ever felt as a 13 year old girl, thrown out on the street by her insane mother all over again, so disappointed in myself that at 54, I was in no better shape, but out on the street again, looking at houses where people had beds they knew they were getting to in a little while.  I cried my heart out with Dan . He’d ridden out from the house nearby on his dirtbike and brought along a beautiful spaghetti dinner and a bag with some cherries and a golden kiwi. Then he said something that just made me cry all over again, but this time out of appreciation of the love of my son. He said ‘Mom, I’ll set up your tent and air mattress for you. We’ll park the Ford this way and put the tent over there and between the ditch and the gully you’ll be safely hemmed in with the fire on the other side. Then after he set up the tent, he rounded up round firestones, made a lovely small fire and bushwacked to find more wood, using the light of his Iphone.

The thing that really got me though, when he said that he would help me get set up was ‘Mom, I’ll stay with you as long as you want, and I won’t leave until you fall asleep, and I’ll go to the house and set the alarm and bring you coffee at 7:00 in the morning.’

And he did. We had a beautiful fire. I sat on the minibike like a queen as he built the fire up over and over and we talked. He set up his ipod with nice music and we watched the fire and he helped me ground, helped me process, helped me grieve. I could have written my intentions on a slip of paper and set it ablaze, but there are other fires where I can attend to the necessary healing rituals to move me past this, as is the way of my people. But this time, I was just happy to be alone in that cleared out, overgrown rock quarry, with my 25 year old beautiful, loving son. Finally, I told him I was exhausted. Hadn't slept much in days, spending most of the night staring at dark ceilings looking for some sign of light. Dan then crawled into the tent, just like old times, and asked for a back scratch, just like old times, and I did just like old times. After a while, we talked some more and then I told him it was okay for him to go. He slipped out of the tent, zipped me in, and walked the minibike up the hill so that he wasn’t too noisy leaving. When did my holy terror become so thoughtful? Then in a little while, my cell phone buzzed from under my pillow, a text had arrived. “Made it home safe, Mom. Love you.”

Today, we had breakfast, I took him to a job interview and we had some sushi for lunch. We went dutch and it was the first meal I’d eaten since Thursday’s disastrous news killed my appetite. We went back to where he is staying and he fixed the duct tape on the roof, filled my water bottles and stocked me up with ice. As I sat there, wondering where I would go tonight, he said ‘Why don’t you go to see Grace again?’ to which I replied, ‘Because I don’t want to spend another $42.” And he handed me $20, saying “Now you only need $22.”

I can’t help feeling like this is the gift that is coming out of this spiritual experience that is pushing all my buttons of worthlessness and abandonment. I have splendid, healthy, capable adults for children who love me. I also can’t help but feel that somewhere in the twisted recesses of the mind of a man who claimed he loved me one day, and didn’t the next, there is a soupcon of jealousy motivating his resentment, because now that he’s shot himself in the foot and run off the only person who knows him better than anyone, he doesn’t have this kind of genuine, unconditional love in his life at all.

“Mom, I’ll stay here with you until you fall asleep. And I’ll even bring you coffee the way you like it in the morning.”

I may be homeless and feeling lost, but if I continue to take things day by day, I know I will wade through  this mire of unknowns and I will emerge on the other side with an intact self esteem, and dare I say, be even better, even more independent, than I have ever been before.

If only I hadn’t gotten that job and hadn’t discovered that stuff on WronG’s laptop, I know now, I wouldn’t be so proud of my children and friends.

Silver linings… bathing me in their golden light. I am healing.

I hope, in my heart of hearts, that the catalyst to all this does serious healing too.

I Don't Know About You, But For Me I am Exiting the Betrayal Grounds

Nights consist of three hour patches of staring at a dark ceiling trying to find the bright side of life

This is where I thought I had a home.

Days trying to maneuvre in a morras of blindsided betrayal that has torn my time / space continuum asunder

How do I manage to get into these situations that have me so helpless and powerless?

Pink skin ring, I sunburned the patch where the ring used to be.

One of these days, I will be on the other side of this and things will be good again.

I have to believe that for both of our sakes.

But I will be on my own way.

I never saw it coming.

They say the wife is the last to know...

Honesty we said, we agreed, in the early days of establishing each other's core values... honesty
like porcelain. it can be mended if broken, but can never be whole again. Trust is everything.

Now we have nothing

with one deal breaker decision

or maybe more

I don't ask for details because I don't want to know.

Don't make me out to be the crazy

one.

I'm trying to keep both our dignities intact.

And exit the betrayal grounds

with Grace.

My Queen of the Sun Story - Awakening chakras and inviting awareness

The means to achieving awareness, empowering your divine organs, the chakras, to awaken and engage.

"The six petaled flower of life

1)      Positivity. All your thoughts and actions must become positive. You must be able to see the good element in everything. Always there is something beautiful to be found. When negativity is transcended, your world is transformed, becoming lovely, joyous, almost heavenly. Seek ever the good, the beautiful, the true.

2)      Concentration. Control of thought. Our thoughts must not occur in a random, haphazard manner. We must guide the flow of our thinking, and thus also our feelings. We must master our minds, subduing elements that arise without our permission, thereby training our powers of thought.

3)      Control of action. Guidance of will. We must develop strength, tenacity, and endurance in our will-life. When we make a resolve to do something, we must carry it through without fail, as long as it is an honourable, worthy intention. Be not a leaf in the wind. Obey your inner commands. Always remember, repetition of specific actions strengthens the will.

4)      Inner tranquility. This is the serenity of spirit. Equanimity in the life of feelings. Nothing must for long throw you off balance or shatter your poise. Going with the flow.

5)      Be open-minded and tolerant of other viewpoints. Careful attentive listening and the withholding of snap judgments. You must be willing to listen to any and learn from all, even the most humble. This attitude of open-mindedness does wonders for expanding and illumining the inner life, stimulating the growth of the light in the soul.

6)      Develop a profound gratitude for life and the gifts and opportunities that each moment brings. Life itself is a gift made possible by the deeds of innumerable beings. The natural kingdoms provide us with a bounty of beauty. The earth and the heavens are a vast treasure house. One’s heart should beat in thankfulness to the all of life. This state of constant gratitude exalts the soul, creating happiness and lifts one into the celestial regions.

These activities must be integrated and practiced together, without undue exertion on our part. Of course, this takes time. And they must be linked together by one essential, unifying virtue, which may be visualized as a pink rose in the centre of your heart – the practice of loving kindness. When kindness characterizes your approach to life, and when the qualities become second nature, done without effort, a striking metamorphosis will take place in the soul.

The petals of the subtle, spiritual organs, the chakras, become pliant and alive and begin to gently revolve. Inner perception, both seeing and hearing, quietly unfolds. You are born into the higher planes of life, possessing direct vision of the heavenly spheres. Angels rejoice, for the world gains a conscious seer, a clairvoyant, an initiate of life.

This is the way and the goal. It is the path of inner/outer freedom. Your inner life becomes one of quiet attention and heavenly contemplation. Your outer activity becomes a source of helpfulness and blessing to all. Thus you kindle the fires of your spirit and illumine the inner regions of your soul. You will then radiate strength and light, becoming a beacon in the darkness of the world. " *( link to source at end of article.)

I have been a beacon in the world for many years. In the 80's - 90's, when I ran Moonwit (Meeting Our Own Needs With Imagination & Tenacity) we were a beacon in the darkness, a candle lit to attract weary women so that we could provide them with holistic solutions to the challenges they were physically experiencing in a world where Patriarchal influence diminishes the very act of peopling the planet.

 This is the story of how all this has affected me, especially after reading the book that this quote is from.

I am reading ‘Queen of the Sun’ by E.J. Michael. It is like ‘Mutant Message Down Under’ and ‘The Celestine Prophecy’, and not unlike the experiential books by Lynne V. Andrews. You can’t read it without feeling your evolution hasten. These 6 points to becoming more aware really resonated with me and I had to document them so I can easily pull them up and refresh my memory as to what I need to do or what I need to remind myself I’m not doing.

As a sentient, conscious and sustainably minded person, I have been on a shamanic path for the past 40+ years, ever since I discovered that the gift of reading (which I learned INSTANTLY upon finding out what those strange characters meant in Grade 1), I discovered the ‘Occult’ section of the library and between 7 and 14 when I left home, I read everything I could get my hands on in order to heighten my understanding of a very strange and distorted world, that which was revealed to me by my very strange, scarred and mentally distorted mother. That there was a sixth sense, that Edgar Cayce existed helped me to develop my own answers when I was so puzzled continuously by the contradictions of a woman on pharmaceuticals who was present one minute and irrationally furious the next. I read Tarot from the age of 13 and had some interesting incidents between then and 31, when I began to read a lovely deck called the Motherpeace deck, by Karen Vogel, as a means of providing income. Learning about other's wisdoms about the supernatural world around me kept me sane.

Now I am 54 and I have been coasting on my laurels for quite a few years, as if my shamanic self went dormant. The Tarot cards asked to be kept silent, I lost contact with pagan friends who had shared the seasons of the year with me, and I started a new life in a new city in a new role, that of someone’s wife, and the kids were grown so  I could rest from those years of intense responsibility.

But the other day, I knew that was all changing. Little signs started occurring with more and more frequency as synchronicity and coincidence abounded sometimes hourly, sometimes even more. Then I wandered into a bookstore when I had some time on my hands, waiting for my elderly charge who I take to her appointments now and then. I selected a few books and took them to the cash thinking that it was a second hand store, and these books shouldn’t cost more than $10. When the clerk asked me for $24, I was surprised and said so. I immediately looked at Sonia Johnson’s Wildfire ( I have a copy in storage already, highly recommended) and Laurel K Hamilton’s Cerulean Sins and at the Queen of the Sun and decided upon the fiction, passing the other two back to the clerk. The owner of the store was there and heard my exchange and I explained to the two of them that it was too close to payday and I couldn’t justify spending that much when the owner piped up, ‘Let her have Queen of the Sun too. Give her both of those for the $9’. I was thrilled and smiled, leaving the store with a promise to return with many books, but puzzled as to why he would let me take that very expensive copy of Queen of the Sun. It alone was marked at $14, a generous gesture, I thought.

Little did I know.

When I started reading it and time started to fly, I knew why. The pages were telling me subtexts of subliminal consciousness development as I enjoyed the surface story, a fiction of a man and a sacred relic that he found and had to protect from the Trilateral Commission, a world organization bent on assuming global control and how spirit stepped up to restore the imbalances such a huge, angry, violent megalith could impose upon our world.

One of the designs on the amulet, (besides the one of Isis, Queen of the Sun and forebearer of my own favourite goddess Ishtar) was a six pointed flower and the quote I began this story with, is what one of the protagonist’s teachers taught him. I thought, worthy of my recording for future reference.

Now comes the eery and enlightened part.

I am already trying to follow these  tenets in so many words but never have I had it laid out so well. I struggle constantly with trying not to apply a harsh judgment and criticism of everything I look at but there is a negative element to my thinking that has been able to assume priority and often my first response to any irregularity or dissonance is to respond critically and negatively. By reading and rereading these six points, I have been able to weaken that muscle and to strengthen the positivity muscle, allowing me to stay in the positive, and to stifle that critic. Of the six points, that has been what has been my hurdle to assuming  my role as being resourceress, she who taps into the abundance of the world. I can feel my chakras slowly starting  their revolve and it resonates through my every minute now. It feels as if someone has taken the ties that bind me off and I am lighter in some way. I am feeling a profound sense of interconnectedness with friends, with my remaining family, with people I meet and yesterday was no exception. And then abundance started to increase exponentially. I started getting emails from like minds, met them and were friends immediately. More job offers started coming in, of the ilk that I could even dare to consider. When one seemed sweeter than the rest, I set up an appointment for that initial interview that was requested of me and the next day, drove to the real estate office to meet Tony.

After two years of slogging to find work and coming up empty, I had posted an ad on Craigslist outlining my skills and employment desires/criteria, a couple of months ago. The position was to fill a developing position as marketing assistant for a real estate agent who is making home buying accessible to more people through a ‘better than rent to own’ program that is very compassionate. The man who interviewed me, Tony, and I clicked right away, and it was soon apparent that we were destined to work together. I had the job. I felt an instant kinship with Tony and was happy to shake his hand to finalize the deal. I was employed! The drought was over.

Except the second I shook his hand, I felt a growing sharpness in my chest that started to get tighter and more painful, as if I was having a stroke. I am healthy but this was like heartburn on steroids as we were saying our goodbyes outwardly, but inside I felt this pain increase and increase until I got out of there.  I prayed I wasn’t having a heart attack as he was finishing up his instructions and guidance for my immediate tasks and I didn’t want my feeling unwell detracting from this interview. I mean, what a good impression, you’re hired… now let’s call you an ambulance. I was able to get out without betraying my increasing discomfort, and I drove home via the Victoria General hospital, just in case I needed to turn right at the highway, to Emerg instead of left, towards home. I don’t have heart issues. I haven’t had heartburn since my first pregnancy but the profound experience of tightness in my chest was impossible to ignore and marked Tony and my first handshake/contact with a huge ‘underlining in red’.

I bundled up my laptop and purse, and slipped out to my car where I sat for five minutes waiting for the tightness to subside and was very relieved when it did. I have not been eating much lately as a result of the domino actions of all these changes in my mind/spirit, so it stands to reason that my body was also coping with the changes, affecting my hunger/need for food in a positive way, so I stopped at a local coffee shop, had some eggs and potatoes and felt better instantly.

Then today, a small task had Tony ask me to drop by the office with a smartstick so that he could load a program on it for me. As I sat in the office and we chatted about the different discoveries of our lives, he revealed to me that he was slated for surgery in October. When I asked him what it was, he said that he was slated for a double by-pass! What I had felt on that first physical contact with Tony was HIS heart in arrest, not mine!

What this is, is evidence that my chakras are indeed becoming awake and that my sensitivity to others is heightening as a result.

Clearly, as a shaman, I would be wise to refresh myself on the means necessary to protect myself when encountering others physically, so that there is a wall of white light to defer such violent and consuming symptoms so that I can be aware without suffering the consequences of careless contact.

I hope my tale encourages the reader to review those 6 points and possibly to reread their ‘Celestine Prophecy’, ‘Mutant Message Down Under’ or even this beautiful book which I am going to finish now, ‘Queen of the Sun’. I would love to see all my friends and their loved ones benefiting from the wisdoms that lurk within.

The mysterious bookstore owner will see me again. And this time, I will have the link to this story for him to read. It seems he is a part of the scheme of things relating to enlightenment. I wonder if he knows or he was just following destiny’s instincts.

I do know one thing for sure.

It’s time to awaken our chakras. And I do believe that mine has had a head start from the form of the boost of this book's wise words.

http://www.amazon.ca/Queen-Sun-Revelation-J-Michael/dp/0062513559

FeEl ThE LoVe - A rare poem

 

My poem looks like half a bottle if you use your imagination.

The ancestors dance

lazy circles in midair

optimizing spirals of dizzying smallness.

Two cats lounge on railings

contentment personified

as birds sing from the trees to taunt

and entertain.

Chef Lynn on Restaurant Makeover...

Oh my.

What a hot broad.

Oh yeah, my poem...

Lazy ancestors triangulate

as the Esquimalt sun sets

and another big fucking cruise ship

moves in.

Not a cloud in the sky.

Toasting my hardworking hubby

who is far away for a longish time,

with wine he made us

with his own two hands.

Like the blood of someone else

I sip the blackberry luxury

and feel the love.

Sending some of the love to Haiti,

To New Jersey, to the interior...

Toxic Sweets ~ What we are seduced to use on a daily basis.

Many things are the bane of our existence, these days. HFCS is a blanket term for a kind of chemical process that leads foods to be sweet but can consist of many differing degrees of mystery chemicals that have druglike effects on our system, especially when combined with other medication we may already be on, or sensitivities that already exist before exposure to HFCS. Mystery chemicals combine to cause interesting reactions as they stockpile TOXIC consequences for human bodies over years of repeated exposure. Consequences such as tendon fragility, obesity, diabetes, loss of cognitive ability.

Why is it the responsibility of the consumer to become a scientist versed in the cause/effect of chemical/human biology when they are just trying to feed themselves?

If this isn't more reason to seek out local growers and farmer's markets and to stay out of supermarkets, I don't know what is.

Combine how this erosion of your immune system and vitality combines with the erosion provided by our exposure to plastics off-gassing pthalates all around us, and you begin to get a grim picture of what's happening to the world around us.

Pthalates also mimic estrogens, confusing your system with mixed messages. There are connections being made about the affect on unborn male children, that they are being born with smaller reproductive organs. This stuff is being flushed out of our bodies and into our waterways and that is affecting the fish, lots are dying, salmon don't return, and there are reports about how some breeds of fish are feminizing, or having less and less male offspring as well as male fish with smaller reproductive organs, also.

We wear plastic Holey soles sandals on our bare feet. We sit in our hot cars with the plastics offgassing all around us as we clutch a plastic steering wheel. We buy our food in plastic bags that start to disintegrate in our stressed palms as we struggle with the weight of food in it, food wrapped in plastic. We shower behind plastic curtains and the hot water steams up out of plastic tubing into a plastic showerhead that infuses the off gassing particulates in the steam, that hovers in the area of our heads. Then we use plastic shampoo and conditioner bottles that contain ingredients we can't read or understand to wash our hair. Some of those chemicals are as harmful as the pthalates and chemicals in HFCS, but combined with both the pthalates and HFCS toxins, its now a chemical stew that will be dancing with whatever medication you're on.

Years back, when I wrote a paper on the sociological aspects of Ergot, a fungus that caused mass hallucinations in Europe in the middle ages, wreaking havoc on the below stairs serfdom, I saw a phenomena that parallels this one I am writing about today. Here we have a whole culture of people, who are at the mercy of chemical megogiant corporations with their every breath. Who contributes to it, why it is allowed to continue in unspoken silence, why no one shines a light on the elephant in the room boggles my mind.

Like the poor and unfortunate in the Middle Ages in Europe, who were unwittingly at the mercy of a series of events that combined and ensured that the entire population was sent raving out of their minds with every mouthful of bread they consumed, our population today lines up like Zombies in the aisles of Walmart, Zellers, etc, with our baskets full of that which contributes to our failing health. Wether you are buying cleaning or body products scented with parfum/fragrance, snack and refined food products that contain any 'ose's' or HFCS, or using products made from softened plastic that are going to be subjected to extremes of heat and / or petroleum products such as oil from food, these are all part of the elephant no one is talking about.

Don't you think its about time we start talking amongst ourselves and rather than being 'crisis oriented' as in 'The sky is falling', which soon falls on deaf ears, to be 'solution based', and see the glass as half full? How can we do that but by sharing with loved ones this information? It's a small difference, but its better than apathy.

Spiritually, why does our Creator allow this travesty to occur behind the scenes? Why are we held almost immediately accountable for any small infraction of our integrity, yet these megolith consortium of chemical giant industry have nothing holding it back? How come I as an individual must own up to my every responsibility, yet these bazillion dollar ventures are blasting their way into wealth at our expense without consequence? Are they using plastic, hfcs, pthalates themselves?
I've gone from being angry when I go shopping, to being consolational. By that I mean, one glance into a cart and I can tell what is going on in that person's biology and what their immune systems are struggling with. It makes me compassionate that, like the poor with their ergot ridden bread, this person is trying to do their best without the education or facts that would protect them from making these choices.

Sometimes, I'll say something if they look like they might be receptive. Most cashiers have never heard of HFCS, and most customers I've spoken to don't know that parfum/fragrance is a stew of 400+ chemicals to carry scent artificially.

So I keep hammering at this nail, hoping that it touches someone new and someone else starts to go through the process of elimination both on the physical as well as other levels of mourning and loss. Mourning and loss because as children we consumed treats/recieved gifts innocently. We didn't have to worry about what was in it or what it was made from.

There is a resentment attached to going grocery shopping on the merit that you're fortunate enough to even have money to spend on groceries, but now you have to look at the overall supermarket, suss out if they are laid out ethically, which means has their cleaning supplies far away from food stuffs, especially baby or pet foods. Resentment attached to shopping taking hours when it took minutes before one had to read and understand complex ingredient labelling.

I might mention that organic bananas are comparative in price but have a huge difference in exceptional taste versus pulp and from a nutritional standpoint as well, for instance, speaking to the person from a peer to peer standpoint, speaking 'up' to their intellect, rather than down my nose at the poor ignorant sap. Less resistance and more acceptance when approaches are honouring.

There is a zen to acceptance, but I think that I will pass on 'accepting' the status quo. It didn't work when my ancestors were buying their daily bread, and it don't work for me now. I will say something about what we are up against, every platform of opportunity I get. I invite you to do the same. Collect a few articles that are easy to read to shoot to folks who seem interested or receptive in your sphere of associations, we can use social media for our benefit to widen our friend's and loved one's knowledge.
On to the zen of doing something about it, even if all it is, is my whiny blog. Because I love you. Period.

Get the book 'Slow Death by Rubber Duck' if you want to learn more from an enjoyable and easy read.

The Tum Chronicles... pondering my navel as it were. Weight or selflove...

Looking at my tummy, I am remembering that it used to create lips and eyebrows, fingers and spinal colums, brains and hearts. I am realizing that it used to house life. That the soft pulse of my veins kept my offspring feeling warm, alive and safe in there. It used to bulge to the size it is now because it had life burgeoning in it, eager to be born, definite in the eventuality that a birth was to occur. It housed and created three human beings.

I am realizing with the changes in my life, that I have moved myself into that warm, alive, safe space and that I am having a 'startover', a rebirth of myself. It is the same size as when I harboured life in there, but now I am the life in that space. I think that by working at CEDRIC and learning that I am not dealing with an eating disorder but a series of unfortunate circumstances, has led me to understanding better about once again having the tummy I used to have, back twenty years ago, when I used to carry my babies, prior to their birth. This tummy today, which has increased in size since the birth of my final baby, Grace, is now at maximum capacity for me. It has been creeping up in size and girth in spite of my lame efforts at eating wisely and trying to keep moving enough to avoid it. I've been dealt blows and benefits that have combined to affect my physiology because eating well and menopause, combined with knee / leg injuries have rendered me a much larger woman than I intended to be, or am comfortable with and that is what I am addressing now.

At 6 feet tall, my water weight has fluctuated 30lbs at any given day. Once I started exhibiting the swelling legs and ankles of edema in my 40's, I knew that I was going to have problems if I didn't get a handle on it. Root compounds from my chinese medicine doctor helped, but I stopped looking at scales as a result, because they could rarely depict an accurate representation of the state of my health. This caused me to subtly put on weight, for the fat to creep on a little at a time while I tried to get my feet under me. Its so disconcerting now that scales don't even go high enough to tell me what I weigh.

I look down at this tummy and think how I can get out of the shell of protection that I have wrapped around myself and realize that it is almost time for my own rebirth, for my own eventual inevitability that I will become chrysalis and butterfly in the imminent future. Enter hesitation and anxiety at losing the safe little nook I've tucked myself away in. I counter with the thoughts of new friends who don't let me withdraw. I remember yesterday when I tried to leave early from a monthly craft luncheon with a group of new girlfriends and got told to sit right down, there's no escaping, you're one of us now... lol

So now, as I sit in my solituded, tv on in the background with an episode of 'Hoarders', of all things, and I realize that like the people on the show, I'm hoarding my self, inside myself.

This brings me to the next question, and I'm wondering if I wait till the birth decides itself when it's ready, or if I take it upon myself to birth me at a time of my own choosing.

And I guess that why I am writing this, in wondering if there are any ideas or insights that my wonderful friends and family who read this note, can share with me.

I have two months in which to initiate changes that both honour me and create the steps I need to let go and let Goddess, to break out of this shell of comforting pudge and confront the things that have been holding me back, while my better half is out of town on a teaching course, clear across the continent. Shall I strike while the iron is hot?

I have had medical tests that reassure me that I am not diabetic, don't have heart issues, no cancers, no debilitating diseases. What I can do anything about, I will. There is a trauma specialist who is going to consider the pros and cons of my harbouring sharp shrapnel against my carotid artery, when I can finally get an appointment, at the end of a great long waiting list. Same with the orthopedic surgeon who will decide what my knees need. I feel caught in a conundrum. I can't get breast reduction surgery or have my knees fixed until I lose about 150 lbs, I can't lose 150 lbs very easily if I can't do any weight bearing exercise that involves my knees.

The bright light in all of this, besides that in spite of being morbidly obese, i am healthy. I was told by the doc's locum that my ACL was not torn completely and has since healed, but are showing stress because of having to carry my weight. Hopefully I will be able to get a handle on my weight now that I'm taking thyroid synthetic meds, She also said that I will likely feel my metabolism speed up and will notice that weight loss comes easier to me now. :)

So, do I take the proverbial bull by the horns and initiate my own rebirth, radically changing my habits and coping strategies, or do I approach it organically and let time take its course, so that I come to end of packing it on and turn it around simply by becoming more involved in the world, in getting more things done, in being more active... just asking...

Disintegrating Humanity -Plastic pthalate dispersal increases as built in obscellescence kicks in

I was posting to a friend's Facebook status this morning. She had put up a video of a home in South America made almost totally from recycled plastic bottles. It brought to mind a huge event facility I saw that had been constructed in China as the outcome of a recycling contest among architects. What both buildings failed to recognize was that the bottles were exposed to daily sunshine, the very thing that causes the built in wear out date to speed up, the very thing that makes the bottles leech particulates that include some very harsh toxins. Pthalates are renowned to have the ability to fool the human physiology to thinking that its being inundated with female hormones. This is causing a lot of problems in sterility around the world, and although I don't have any peer reviewed articles to refer you to to promote my claims, I encourage you to do your own homework on pthalates to learn as much as you possibly can about the world we live in these days.

Pthalates are contributing to women's issues from cervical cancer to menopausal symptoms, they are feminizing fetuses in the womb, causing boys to have a smaller testicular region, and decreasing sperm production. That's just what I remember from off the top of my head from what I've been learning about it via my research.

People are eager to change their lives and many have thought that by recycling plastic items, they are doing the right thing. Keeping waste out of the landfills is a good idea, but not if keeping them around and breathing their decay is detrimental to our overal health. Some strip grocery bags and then crochet this 'plarn' into shopping bags. A nice idea, and one my Auntie Nora used to do for decades, being an early free thinker and practical prairie woman. But what she died of could have had a lot to do with her constant handling of plastic as she sat day after day making her pretty shopping bags out of bread and grocery bags.

Plastic shopping bags can be filled with a lot of weight and then are carried fair distances. Palms are sweating and straining to deal with the weight, pores are wide open as the disintegrating plastic leeches pthalates through its oily particulate residue that is ingested immediately into the bloodstream through the sweat glands.

Same goes for holey soles and other knock off brands of the rubberized plastic sandals. You wear them barefoot, you sweat in them with all your weight on them, straining the plastic, ingesting that same toxin bearing oil that emits from the disintegrating plastic under your feet as your hands do from the shopping bag made from recycled plastic. If reflexology is the technique of helping rebalance the body through related regions of the feet, what is wearing hot holey soles on a steamy summer day doing through those same feet doing to your system?

How about your shower curtain? You are likely thinking a plastic shower curtain cheers up the bathroom and protects it. But what happens in a shower. Heat and steam. How are you protected from particulates that are carried by the heat and steam when you are naked with all pores wide open? Where is your nose in that heat and steam. By the ceiling. Where the the most of the steam carries the particulates.

Like I said, we don't think these things through.

Even in the case of sex toys. The stuff that makes plastic pliable is the toxic stuff that creates pthalate exposure in our bodies. Even porn is no longer any fun to watch as I now only see young women acting like breeders who wouldn't likely be doing it if they had any other self respecting way to get money, having softened plastic in the form of dildos thundered in and out of them, and where? Why, where they plan on having their new life emerge from someday...  which carries me to the use of disposable menstrual gear, all of which is plastic and chemicals...

So... how are you going to focus on your home now that you see plastic in a different light?

Dea said that when they build their plastic greenhouse using bottles that they will be enclosing it in portland cement to keep the narsties away, with ventilation holes in safe places... What will you do?