women

44. CIRCLES OF SISTERS

Excerpt from “My Lovedance”

I am sitting in a circle with my mother, my sisters, and my nieces. In the center lies a deck of Druid Animal Oracles. With a bit of Irish and a tad of Scottish blood running through our veins, our interest is piqued. A few summers before I had introduced my sisters to Medicine Cards from the Native American tradition. These cards represent the animals sacred to the Celtic tradition. Time to reconnect to our roots.

We each pick five cards. Each of us uses a different method to choose yet all choose wisely. The cards seem to speak to our souls. The center represents Self. The East is Intellect. The South is Sensuality. The West is Emotion. The North is Intuition. The cards come with a book interpreting each oracle. “Let Aunt Debbie read. It sounds more real when she reads.” My youngest niece scribes while I read.

While my eldest niece attends closely, the rest have trouble giving their full attention to the one whose turn it is to choose. We could use a talking stick. Over the years, I have noticed how little we attend to each other. We each have something funnier or more brilliant to contribute than what is being spoken in the moment. Crosstalk is rampant at every gathering. If you cannot attend to everything going on at once then you get lost. Perry Sister brilliance is loud and quick…few can keep up with us.

In my women’s circle, we pass the talking “stick” or crystal or feather and each woman has a turn to share what’s going on in her life. The rest of us attend quietly only giving insight if she asks. After sharing at the last circle, we needed to discuss the retreat schedule. These ethereal women don’t do business. So it got chaotic…few understood what was needed, women were offering random suggestions and the one trying to keep notes got lost. My Perry Sister brilliance clicked on as I interpreted all the crosstalk. The note taker asked how I was able to do it. “I listen fast.” I replied.

Yet as I watched my nieces try to understand the meaning of their cards, I witnessed my sisters chat amongst themselves not really present in the moment. It was interesting how many cards in common we all had…but we are family. My youngest sister and I both chose Goose and like Mother Goose, we are very maternal. I share Seal with my sister, the mother of my four nieces. Seal represents True Love, Longing and Dilemma. I’ve been faced with many dilemmas in my life and longed to know myself as love. I’ve found True Love.

We are at a time of our lives when The Change can force change upon us. Grandchildren come to us just as our fertility leaves us. Our spouses are changing too, sometimes for the better, sometimes not fast enough. We long for something. Many menopausal women begin their spiritual journeys. That’s one of the gifts of being Hormonally Challenged. You begin to see your life through different eyes…and you want more.

My husband told me once in the midst of my searching. “You climb up the fence to get to the grass on the other side and at the top you meet someone climbing over to get to your grass.” He says it’s all the same grass…perceived through different eyes.

True. But we all go through times when we need to be sure our grass is as green as it gets.

42. BACK AGAIN

Excerpt from “My Lovedance”

And I write this now while sitting in the cool cave-like basement of my sister’s house in Utah. I am taking refuge from the heat of the kitchen. Literally, it’s hot at 8:30 in the morning in mid-September. Mom started cooking meatballs as soon as the sun was up. Yes, meatballs. We’re having a baby shower. Doesn’t everyone have meatballs at a shower?

And it’s figuratively hot up there. My sisters and I are so different. They hate honey. I love honey. They ask me to make granola while I’m here. But it requires honey. They concede. And vanilla and cinnamon and ginger…

“Oh, no ginger!” They say.

“But you liked my granola” enough to ask me to make it again, “and I make it with ginger.”

“We liked the first batch you gave us, that last batch was too much.”

Hmmm. And I say aloud, “That’s interesting, cause my family liked that batch the best.”

“We’re your family!”

“I mean the family I created.” And I come downstairs to take refuge in my writing as I have done since I was a girl.

My sisters are much closer to one another than I am to any of them. I’ve tried over the years. I should be with them now shopping, (which I hate – to shop – not them) bonding, yet it is not my way. Really has never been. Besides it’s that Last Minute Lizzie thing. Although I must admit every gathering is a bit better. They seem more prepared or perhaps I am more tolerant.

My memories and theirs are not the same. We witnessed our lives so differently. And they have taken refuge in each other so their memories have merged. I am learning to love them where they are now. Even if I do not get a voice. That’s why they do not know me and probably I do not know them very well. Trying to separate one from the pack is hard. So when we get together I am lost.

They attend well to one another yet not to me. True we don’t have much in common. They read all the same books. They listen to same music. They all watch TV. And that’s what they like to talk about…the fiction, the rock stars, the reality shows. I can’t keep up.

So our bonding over the years has come in the form of crisis…I’m good with helping others in need. So they come for support and I try to offer wisdom, some of which they receive. And then I do not hear from them until the next crisis or family gathering, whatever comes first.

This gathering is my fault. I wanted, truly wanted, to honor my niece who is having the first baby. I said nothing, but if I want it enough, it becomes. So I was not surprised shortly after voicing my desire to Steve, I get a call from my sister. She wants to surprise her daughter with a baby shower and would like for me to come. So here I am.

Wondering how they will feel about my telling my story…

Do we really choose the family we’re born in? I do believe so…to learn soul lessons. Mine has taught me tolerance. And how to be my truth in the midst of chaos…I’m still working on this one. Because family of origin brings up your deepest darkest soul issues. Goddess, bless them.

They’re home now…I can hear their pounding footsteps above me and their loud voices…sounds like arguing but it’s not. It’s family that loves so hard to bruise. When it comes down to what’s important…our family gathers…and cooks and eats, and sticks together because blood is thicker than water. But that’s Italian…isn’t it?

Besides the sauce is off. Remember the meatballs? There’s no wine. It’s my Mormon sister’s daughter who’s having a baby. Oh, and Mom couldn’t find oregano That’s ok. My sister takes me out to her garden… “Isn’t this oregano” Yep. I snip some off and take it into the hot kitchen to help fix the sauce that will smother the meatballs that the guests will enjoy in honor of my niece. She’s having a baby! And maybe I can get some time alone with her and offer a sacred feminine blessing. I think she’ll like that…

27. IMPATIENCE

Last minute doesn’t work for me. I am most like the goddess when all my bowls are spinning gracefully in the air. For me, last minute feels as if I’m a clown juggling too many balls knowing they’ll soon come tumbling down upon me.

I pack a week ahead. Just be sure I have everything and everything fits. I like to plan ahead for events, ready when the day comes. One of my dearest friends is a Last Minute Lizzie. Every Easter, she would invite us over and twenty more family and friends to celebrate. We would arrive early to help, and find that they were in the midst of a remodeling project (she liked to take advantage of the gathering to get her husband to fix up the house) and she would still need to shop! So off I would go with her while Steve stayed to help him and frantically we would get it together…rarely before the guests arrived…

My sisters like to fly by the seat of their pants too, waiting to shop when we arrive a day or two before the holiday. That can drive me crazy! I need to plan and be ready. After our parents divorced, my home became the gathering place for my three sisters, their spouses and all their children. It was stressful since there was so much to do before they arrived. I wanted to be able to spend time with them, but was usually so wound up by the preparations and wanting everything to be perfect that their visits became more and more of a burden.

No matter how well I was doing at controlling my eating disorder, the stress of the holidays would bring Bulimic Deb out of her cage. I yearned for quiet holidays. The more stressed I got, the more I would find myself counseling patients with the same Superwoman Syndrome. I would tell them—just say No!—yet could not take my own advice. Finally, after ten years of this holiday madness, I told one of my sisters I couldn’t do it anymore. It was their turn to play Mom.

Yet it wasn’t where we met that made me so anxious. It was being in their energy. I could tolerate my friend’s frenetic energy, but not my sisters. We were too close and would fall into the roles we always played from the drama of our childhood. The more I found peace in my own life, the more frenetic their energy felt. I couldn’t seem to stay centered when I was in their midst.

Every gathering there would be blow up. I was always looking for their souls and they were hiding behind our roles.

Nov 28th, 2004 Finally a breakthrough with my sisters! Always I have dreaded our family gatherings. Early in my adult life, I fretted over the work related to the holidays, then feelings of unworthiness as I worried about the outcome. Was everything good enough? Was I? Lately dealing with deep seated emotion that threatens to boil over, I have not shared my life with my sisters fearing that we could not find common grounds to safely communicate. Still there are gaps but we are closer after this weekend’s tumultuous confrontation, all four of us crying in the bathroom. We needed a red tent and had to create our own chamam experience. Our passion brought on spooky weather. Bitter rain, harsh winds targeted the house. Our husbands took the kids to the mall where the weather was nicer. My sisters claimed that I did not share all with them and I replied that I feared to reveal to them the true fullness of my emotion—my power can be overwhelming. They pushed, then got blown away, then came back for more. My sisters are hardier than I thought. I do feel loved by them but do not believe I appreciate them fully. My sisters are aspects of the divine. They say I feel superior, but I see their unhappiness, their fear, their unwillingness, it seems, to progress. Yet I realize that just because I have leapt so far away from what was our mutual starting point does not mean that they have not also moved. Steve has kept pace, and in their own way, so have they.

As a point being I am supported by their effort, faith, and love. Without them would I be where I am in this moment? I am buoyed up by their being, my own being reflected in the stillness of theirs, in the wake of their progress, exponential reflections of our conscious evolution. Why must we name our faults and weaknesses to equalize the interaction? Yet I do it when I counsel with patients, admitting my humanness, and we grow together.

Over the years I’ve learned to flow more easily when things don’t always fall into place. Now I graciously step into my friend’s house and just lend a hand. And she too has learned to get it together earlier and enjoy her guests.

For my 50th birthday, my sisters treated me to a weekend away. I prefer being in nature so we took a boat trip out to Anacapa Island. No drama just pleasant memories of picnicking on the bluff in the midst of nesting seagulls. My sisters still want to know where I am coming from…I have changed so much. On a beach walk, one expressed concern that she thought I felt our family was dysfunctional. I smiled…three of us had eating disorders, all of us grew up with disordered body images, our mother still struggled with self-esteem and our father lived like a hermit… “I guess every family is somewhat dysfunctional,” I replied.

Then the conversation became confrontational and for the first time in six months, I felt that need to purge. I placed my hand on my stomach and watched as my sister expanded into warrior pose, then I was cast back into our childhood dining room feeling the fear bubbling up as she argued vehemently with our father—always fighting another’s battle—and ending up in trouble herself. And I came back to the present and spoke my truth.

“Thank you for embodying the warrior in our family. But I am not the enemy. I am your sister and I love you.” And since then, there has been peace.

It took me 50 years to flow even with my family. How strange it feels to not care about the outcome, but to be fully in the moment with them. I can get used to this. ☺

Excerpt from My LoveDance. Available on Amazon

Chamam Wisdom – Time for Women to Enjoy their Sacred Renewal

What ever happened to the Chamam? You may know the Hebrew Chamam as the red tent, the menstrual hut, the healing place women would go during their moon cycles to renew themselves, to share wisdom, to appreciate their sacred feminine natures?

Let us emulate the wisdom of Mary Magdalen’s time and retreat once a month for sacred renewal. You need not go anywhere. Just within. A cup of soothing tea, a hot soak in water perfumed with your favorite scent, a massage, a long walk in nature. Learn to take time out to care for your self, your body, your soul. Once a month during the dark moon reflect on your interiority. Who are you and why are you here?

Come, spend some time with Mary and the women in LoveDance Awakening the Divine Daughter.
SPECIAL OFFER
Many Blessings,

Deborah

Life is a Dance

Connecting with the rhythm of another, we dance our dreams into reality.

As an author, speaker and healer, I work primarily with women. Why? Because when you heal a woman, you transform the lives of the men they love, the children they bear, all the people they choose to dance with.

LoveDance is the story of Mary Magdalen’s awakening. In writing her story, I healed myself.

LoveDance is my healing gift to you.

I invite you to join her journey and heal your soul.

Cycling with the Moon

As I enter the portal of menopause, I yearn for a way to release when my blood no longer flows. My cycle prefers to mimic the moon—menstruating on the dark moon, ripening with the waxing moon, experiencing the fullness of my power on the full moon, releasing with the waning moon—over and over every month, since I began Genesis Gold.

Not before. No, I had such low body fat that I did not have enough sex steroids to menstruate. Years of bulimiarexia had taken its toll. Until 2000, when I first took Genesis Gold, a botanical formula that came to me in dreams, did my body finally realize its Sacred Feminine potential and I had my first period without the aid of bio-identical hormone replacement therapy.

It was a miracle that I even conceived my children. Both came to me in dreams and then I would gain five pounds and conceive…without menstruating…on my own. My gynecologists were flabbergasted, but my pregnancies were healthy, although delivering the babies was difficult. It wasn’t until my daughter was eleven that I tried to turn the tide of my eating disorder which began just before I entered high school. Although my mother had educated me well throughout puberty, she was disempowered by her upbringing, so my first period was not received in joy. Without a sacred chamam of women with which I might retreat and understand my budding feminine powers, I felt the burden of becoming a woman. So I stopped eating—lost twenty pounds, my breasts, and my period.

In the fall of 1999, I was determined to make peace with my femininity and began wearing a long gypsy skirt during my menses. It was my own personal red tent. My family treated me differently, because I began to treat myself with loving kindness. I rested, drank tea, took long baths, and retreated to my garden to commune with the earth.

A few cycles of wearing my period skirt and I began to have lucid dreams. In response to my prayerful meditation during my moontime, I conceived Genesis Gold. And within two months of taking it, I gained five pounds (the same five pounds I needed to make enough hormones to conceive my children) and started menstruating without exogenous hormonal support at the age of thirty-nine. My body has been following the moon cycle ever since.

So now at the portal of my next feminine transformation, my body still tries to cycle with the moon. At this time, I am taking bio-identical hormones again, a luscious blend of botanicals, I conceived with a wonderful compounding pharmacist. I am ever grateful that my body has waited this long to go through the change. With the support of Genesis Gold, I am entering menopause 4-5 years later than my younger sisters.

So this cycle like so many before, I celebrate with a great release. Under the new moon in the presence of countless stars, I set my intention to bleed out the illusion of unworthiness. It is this not-good-enough attitude that fueled my eating disorder for so long. It is time to let it go.

Just before going to bed, I watched a you tube video of conscious men apologizing to the Sacred Feminine. I wept with joy. I accepted their apology, released our past unconsciousness and opened to receive sacred partnership with the Divine Masculine. I am blessed to be in such a relationship with my beloved husband. And more so blessed to be alive at this time of transformation as the Divine Masculine awakens to honor and co-create a new reality with the Divine Feminine. Then I fell asleep and had a dream.

In my dream, I was ministering to my youngest sister. Her beautiful tan skin was peeling off and underneath was the pale blue veined skin of a man—one that has haunted my dreams since childhood. My daughter, a nursing student, was with me and started to examine her aunt’s desquaminating leg. I shook my head and told her silently, This is a condition that affects women who give up their power and choose to live in parasitic rather than symbiotic relationships with men. Treat her with love but do not take on her dis-ease.

I woke up knowing that the fabric of illusion called unworthiness was finally ripped. I had protected my Divine Daughter with Divine Mother Wisdom. I no longer must wear my not-good-enough veil. Blessed am I to be a woman at this precious time on earth.

A powerful woman healer once sang this to me…and now I can sing it to myself.

Hail, Deborah, full of grace.

Blessed is the fruit of my womb.

And blessed is the world to receive the sweetness of my labor.

And now I sing it to you…

Hail, Sister, full of grace.

Blessed is the fruit of your womb.

And blessed are we to receive the sweetness of your labor.

Thank you, dear sisters, for doing your soul work. For cycling with the moon and dancing with the Divine.

I am honored to be in your sacred presence and look forward to celebrating your feminine transitions with love and joy.

Blessed Be and So It Is.

 

MY SOUL PURSE

 It began at the Grandmother’s Council on 10-10-10. Grandmother Kathy reminded us of the seeds of intention that we planted in the spring. Some could not remember their intentions, some remembered but did not tend them. I was acutely aware of mine. My birthday is on the spring equinox and every year I plant seeds of intention with the hopes of a great harvest come fall. This year my intention was to be open to receive abundance.

Oh, I have much. My life is very rich. A beautiful home, fertile land, healthy, happy children, an amazing relationship with my beloved husband, a fulfilling medical practice, yet I feel that there is more…that I am to go out into the world and share my wisdom…and to do that…I need resources…money and people to help…and although my business pays the bills, still there is debt incurred to develop Genesis Gold…and my book—LoveDance—waiting for release.

Since spring, I have been acutely aware of the abundance in my life, living in gratitude as the universe has seen fit to challenge me…with death, and loss, and sacrifice. As if I had to empty my Soul Purse over and over to make room for the abundance to come.

That night… I have sequence of five dreams…

All the time I’m dreaming, I’m lucid. I fall in and out of sleep after a tremendous hot flash at 12:30—three hours after I fell asleep—and spend time rolling around considering what I should do about my hormonal challenge…then set my intention to know what it’s all about at the soul level and fall asleep…

…The first dream opens with a gathering of women in a great big house. I’m trying to settle in and my roommate shows up. One of my young patients and she’s distraught, hands me her pants. She needs another pair just like them. I tell her pants are expensive in..Italy…wow, that’s where we are!… and she hands me $50. I look at the pants…olive green sueded polyester nothing wrong with them except a blood stain at the crotch. She is mortified that she started her period…this is the patient I saw last week who missed her period…I explain she can wash them out but she will never wear them again—stained with women’s blood…I am saddened by her shame, I want to make it better for her…and then I see that she is me as a girl not at peace with my femininity and all women afraid they are unclean as the world has treated them. And I feel a deep sense of gratitude for finally embracing my feminine power…

…and the dream shifts. I’m with the same gathering, but so crowded, too many women… A fake sense of feminine power emanates from them—over inflated, dangerous—a roomful of women wearing pants under skirts. I need to get away. But it’s so crowded.  Finally, I remember I can fly! I start to push off away from the crowded staircase I’m on…and another woman, one from my women’s circle…says “Hold her!” I am chased by two women, cannot gain altitude through the crowded place, they grasp my trailing legs, but cannot catch me. I feel light but too low…the energy is one of a dog teasing its owners into a game of chase– I head for the light, but they close the opening before I can fly there…I’m trapped in a great big tent! …Lucid, I try to wake up…and realize until I get the message of the dream sequence, I’m not going anywhere…I fly up through ropes, tight ropes. Below me, all the women I’ve gotten involved with in this life and beyond—from girls scouts, to sorority sisters, to the nurse practitioners I led, and the women’s circle, the grandmothers, and interspersed are the women gurus who wove in and out of my life these past 13 years…all who wanted me to join them, to lead them… …my lucid self so happy to be flying again (I haven’t flown in my dreams since the women’s retreat just before the Autumn Equinox where we worked on our karmic imprints)…How funny that my subconscious traps me in a circus tent with the crazy women. I laugh…

….and slip into another dream. A great gathering of all my dead patients. Everyone’s there…Eddie in the background—smoking!—Lucy, Michael, many who I’ve forgotten their names, but recognize their faces—whole and healthy—and their energy. All doing whatever they please…peace emanates from them. The last patient I buried is there too.  A sense of guilt carried from my waking world trickles into my dreamtime. Karen is the spokeswoman and she’s explaining where Anita is on her spirit path so soon after her death. “There is no need for regret. You danced your best dance with each of us. We are where we need to be at this time in human consciousness.” Gran’s there too. And she is walking very strangely…like she’s in a space suit, sort of praying mantis like. I wonder if her walker would help, and Gran apologizes…it’s broke, how difficult it is to move on earth, so much easier over there. I have a catalog in my hands and pick out a handicap toilet for her…pink and orange!…which seems silly since, I know Gran isn’t staying…and feel bad that we didn’t make these accommodations for her while she was alive. I show her the toilet. “I never had such a bright toilet!” she says, “but I don’t think I’ll need one. I’m not staying, dear. This is the first time you let me in.” True, she has visited Steve many times. I inquire about the others. She says “I have very nice visits with Stevie, but the rest are harder.” I hoped she wasn’t spending too much time and effort trying to contact those who were not ready to receive her. She laughed and said, no she is very busy over there, but not to worry. Time is not an issue for her anymore and effort, well it is easier to be in the presence of love than fear… In my observer, lucid dreamer state, I want to spend more time with the dead, knowing it’s precious…it’s the first time I’ve dreamt of Gran and she feels so real…our conversations though bizarre so genuine. The only one I miss in the dreams is Hope…she’s not with the grateful dead…but I’m not sad. I know my beloved Great Dane, my Hope, is where she belongs…

…then I’m on a huge field, tossing a yellow and green stained nerf football to a black dog and a blond boy. Every pass, they switch off, I’m not a good thrower and neither of them catch well. We pass through many other people’s games/lives, communicate with them and move on. All are men and boys…fathers and sons. Playing amongst a group of black men and boys, one of which compliments my butt as I bend over the tub to find the dog tied together like a broken doll almost fetal like. I keep finding its limp body left behind with the ball underwater. At first I dismiss the comment as I did in my youth with an excuse and then I replay the scene and graciously thank the man and he swells and merges with the other black men, their sons receiving their vibration as the sacred feminine received them…back to the fetal dog and used up ball left underwater…I realize the boy has moved on… this boy-dog issue I know is mine…my inner boy child leaving me and the spirit dog connecting him to the otherworld left behind…this is part of the healing the divine masculine within me…

…then I’m back in the house—my recurring house dream. Usually in the “house” dream, I am so frustrated…my sisters keep me from getting what I need to get done, I’m always cooking or cleaning and everything is a disaster…this time I am just watching while being in the midst of them…like I’m watching a home movie while being in it … this time, instead of wandering the never-ending rooms, and halls, I stay in the kitchen-family room where all the family is gathered. It’s our rental, yet I have no sense of ownership… The family has rented it before and had a disaster with the microwave. I am surprised I am not making a fuss that they are trying to microwave a whole chicken…Steve even looks to me for a response, but it is like I am just observing, it’s all very funny and we’re playing our silly parts again and again with the same outcome, I even tease about some goofy fake fur pants I plan to get Carl, but no, it’s John now since Kelli changed all the names around and Karen (the fashionable sister) looks at me horrified… Later I am to meet Steve for a trip, he’s coming back to the house to pick me up, but Karen needs my car to go to work…and she’s dressed in these too big jeans, strange polka dot hose and heels, a vest she made up out of our dead PopPop’s pajama top and a nice leather jacket on top of it all. I send her out with my blessing, but need to get my purse out of the car because it has everything I need to go away with Steve. I’m surprised at the floppy little purse that seems so empty (my soul purse)…I never carry purses in my dream…always have what I need somewhere on me… And then I am my daughter Kyra meeting her beloved Tom to go to Hawaii. ..and I realize all is superfluous because I must get ready for a wedding…

Then I wake up!

The energy of the dreams was curiosity…taking a trip down the rabbit hole of my subconscious…and at times I try to get out but I know it’s all a dream and stay to learn more. There’s no fear, just tempered amusement…bemusement. I know I am growing while in the dark dream state…I intended this before falling asleep …I know these dreams represent what I have cleared from my soul purse…my fears of being a woman, my tendencies to get captured by others and taken advantage of, the shame of failing in my healing practice, letting go of the boy to allow room for the divine masculine, being with my family all the interior mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, daughters, sons and not being smothered by my relationships with them but seeing the humor in life and being gracious with my humanity…then going on the next stage of my soul journey, preparing for the divine masculine to experience the sacred marriage of divine feminine and divine masculine within me in the heart of the earth…starting all over again like newlyweds… The last sequence with the empty purse (I never dream of purses!) with Hope not part of the dead but so deeply embedded in my soul, not something to be cleared out of my soul “purse”… something to keep always.

This crazy dream sequence was in fact…the past six months of soul work from the time on the spring equinox when I planted the seed of intention to be open to receive abundance…through all the work of clearing out all that doesn’t serve me, and making room for a great harvest, a filling up of soul…a completeness of self…whole, finally to be whole.

What a blessing to be reminded of this journey by the grandmother’s council! I shared this dream with Grandmother Kathy and she says she sees a red-purple purse…violet is my life color…with a golden clasp opening to receive, closing to enjoy, then emptying to be open again and again to receive all the gold the divine has in store for me.

May your Soul Purse be empty of that which does not serve you and filled with golden abundance!

Love and Light,

Deborah