Aug 11 24: Forest Sea Glass
and giving other permissions
Hello!
Today is beautifully melancholy as cooler weather descends and the sun is dressed in shrouds of misty cloud cover. The western mountains are a pale blue outline above the ever green landscape. The puppies are sleeping after a beautiful hike amidst wildflowers and greenery in an area that has spent the last many years recovering from wild fire (Thursday, 8/8/24).
I started writing this letter way back in July, but I've had to come back to it again and again, needing a bit more understanding and living on my part before I could finish it.
Many times I've come back to add to it. Polish it like sea glass with the love of the universe, today included.
House Keeping…
I've changed the headings a bit to differentiate between my experience and pathway through my life, and how you can utilize aspects of my experience for your own practice: My Weaving and Your Weaving.
I also highlighted where I gave myself permission to bee; polish my own soul like sea glass while living in the Rocky Mountain forests.
You can use what I have written for your own permission slip or simply as a guide to write your own (see Your Weaving for details).
Love, Light and Shadows, Isabella ❤️
The Call to Live Deeply
Sweetest Grass Roots Devotionals is about making a promise to devote time and give sacred space to our healing, our internal processes. I share my practice with you in hopes it inspires you to create your own. To show the way with words and images steeped within my subconscious tea brought to life on canvas, in songs, stories and spirit journeys. How to live more deeply within your awareness and connection of the microcosmic world, and in turn our macrocosmic universe.
I wish I could promise you that every letter I write will contain perfectly organized subjects with perfect grammar and punctuation that obviously connect the dots for you. This is a promise that I simply cannot make.
What I can hope for… is to bring you along on my adventure into spirit, to show you how simple it can be, and to share in the beauty of my liminal spaces while you learn how to find your own… to make available sign posts, trail markers, bread crumbs and pin cushions.
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Because I will not pretend to know your journey more than I know my own, I write within my experience as woman. Please change as needed for your experience on this journey… for such teachings apply to us all.
Grab a cup of tea, plate of scones and sit by the window listening to bird song while you read… for we are going on an adventure!
Love, Light & Shadows…
Isabella, Pups & Family
My Weaving
I am finding myself enjoying my life a little bit more and more every day.
My hubby had already given me permission to have fun, binge watch tv and sit outside with the puppies in the sunshine now that I'm not working anymore. But I just couldn’t seem to give myself permission to really be in love with my new life or my new me yet. Instead, I kept looking back on who I had been and what I believed I should still be capable of doing.
I don't like the word retire yet because I feel too young and it wasn't my choice to stop working. It was out of necessity pure and simple.
Although my body does really love our new life. The simplicity of it.
Not constantly worrying about how to keep up with the Joneses of the wellness industry anymore. No longer competing for that next new customer while…simultaneously figuring out how to keep the attention of my regulars, doing all the paper work of a full time administrative assistant in the background, and the actual work of a massage, yoga and energetic therapist one-on-one with clients. I don't know how I lasted as long as I did.
My ego doesn't like the word disabled either.
I give my Self permission to lack a defining label that fits where I'm at in life right now.
I must wonder how this comes into play in learning how to enjoy my new life. Where I'm at right now instead of who I had been, once upon a time.
And then there is the fact of 12 medical specialists later and no one can agree on anything. I have a skeleton of a treatment plan spread across 8+ doctors, practitioners and therapists. So there is no defining label here either.
There are many possibilities from Hashimotos and Lyme to Long COVID complicated by a history of Epstein Barr. The possibilities of Ehlers Danlos combined with the facts of Tetany, Joint Hypermobility, Fibromyalgia and Brain Injury. Not to mention the possibility of all of these smashed together in one small frame. This is just the tip of the possibilities iceberg.
We still don't know what's really under all that water surrounding us as we sit on top of this mole-hill mountain. Maybe I will make a new friend. A little mountain mole to teach me how to navigate in the darkness.
When it comes down to treatment, such possibilities are all thrown into the same category of ‘no one really knows what they're doing.’
I give my Self permission to not worry.
Not worrying about what the next flare up will look like. Not worrying about having that perfect doctor if I lose my long-term memories again. Not worrying about the future instead of enjoying the present.
More permission slips to… go ahead and try a Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor (I found 4 in my area), to move all my furniture around to balance the Feng Shui energies in my home, build stone circles in my yard and a relationship with the land.
If modern westernized medicine doesn't want to believe me because not knowing how to fix me makes the doctors uncomfortable, then I will go back to my shamanic roots and earth medicine. I can say I tried the westernized route but it just left me feeling demoralized, depressed, exhausted and put me in a state of giving up on my Self. In all of this I have to find my own balance.
A huge part of patient healing is being believed by the one who is treating them. No one gets better in a room full of professionals that refuse to believe you and then cover over their own in-abilities with unnecessary pills and statements of “It's all in your head.” Or say, “You're never going to get better so stop wasting time trying to find a ‘why’ and get back to living life.” At age 47, that is an impossible pill to swallow.
Women's Healthcare in the west is hopelessly incomplete and I doubt that will ever change. I will have to look to the East and my own ancestral practices if I am to heal my Self. I certainly cannot count on my doctors to do it.
I give my Self permission to go back to the land, my ancestors and my heart.
I give my Self permission to allow two opposite truths to exist in the same space… Oh!
I will keep the western doctors who listened and were helpful. Who gave me at least the skeleton of a treatment plan. I understand the importance of having my heart function checked, of using my CPAP and my brain-therapy protocols.
I give my Self permission to keep the baby and throw out the bath water. Watching the dirty grey soap bubbles swirl down the sink, while I stand here bouncing my precious bundle of giggles on my hip.
I give my Self permission to merge the best medicine of both approaches, to keep the doctors I feel are valuable to me, and to let go of the ones who are not.
I give my Self permission to grieve fully, feel deeply, have the uncomfortable conversations to grow, be as present for my family as I possibly can, and to live my life widely.
I understand as an Enneagram 4 that my levels of joy will not look the same as everyone else's. Giving my Self permission to enjoy life anyway even though I am prone to melancholy and contented sadness.
It is not an easy thing to give one's Self permission to live a life at odds with current culture. To step to the side out of the main stream, to step up onto the higher bank of earth, to turn behind and face that which restricts my growth and movement with the ultimate goal of turning forward again to get a better view of the life I want to live. It takes courage, persistent, fortitude, love and compassionate grace.
I give my Self permission to embody these gifts while living in a world that demands me to be ‘less than.’
I give my Self permission to be imperfect.
The view may cloud over again with mountain mist smelling of lavender, cedar, sage and pine while the shadows and darkness of twilight descends and I find my Self standing between worlds. It will take courage and heart to stay here. To learn here and to wait here. To know when the stream must be re-entered from time to time without losing my ability to step out and up once more.
This is where practice will be necessary….
But when I rise… Oh! How I will rise!
Your Weaving
The Second Chakra, the Sacral Chakra, governs our ability to give and receive pleasure. Our ability to live joy fully in a world at odds with our inner sense of Self.
To ‘Sit With’, to experience and mull over:
What is holding you back? What life do you want to build for your Self? Your family? Your community?
What brings you joy? Pleasure? Contentment? Happiness?
Start small and move outward from there.
As you read this work, what percolated up from your subconscious? Emotions? Thoughts? Images? Does my work inspire you to create one of your own?
Writing Your Permission Slip:
Turn this into an arts and crafts project. Pull out the Elmer's glue and glitter like it's kindergarten all over again.
The top has big bold letters… I give my Self Permission to… and then write out your empowering lists of permissions based on your previously answered ponderings above.
When you're finished… hang it where you will see it at the beginning and end of every day. Take a picture on your phone so you have it to refer back to during difficult daily moments.
And of course… journal about this experience.
Journal Prompt for Secret Messages: Choose an idea, word line, or entire phrasing from what I’ve written here and write down everything that comes up for you in a free-flow without censorship. Go back through and circle key words and phrases from your own writing. Is there a secret message hidden within your subconscious? Within your Soul?
Take it one step further, and continue to journal about how that secret message makes you feel. Do you agree with it? Disagree? Why? Do you have a friend who will welcome bouncing the ideas around so you may see a deeper well within your Self?
Accessing Spirit through Creation… Words, Artwork, Jewelry, DIY Rosary or Prayer Beads. Create a more physical practice through Yoga, Qi Gong, Tai Chi, Nature Walks and more! Pick one or two for your practice today and see what happens! Don’t forget to journal about it so your future self will have a road map on challenging days.
Today’s Resources
Line “…to make available sign posts, trail markers, bread crumbs and pin cushions.” : Refers to all the different sign posts and trail markers that you might find in fairy tales and wisdom stories. Bread crumbs famously found in Hansel and Gretel, and following the pin cushion comes from my family’s deep dark forest roots across the ocean.
Poetry/Quotes/Images: Unless otherwise stated, I wrote it or made it :) IEM 2024
Painting from Tree of Life Series copyright IEM 2020; signed Moon Eagle.
Photos of My Life: taken on my cell phone Aug 2024.
What We’ve been up to
Starting to Re-Read:
Don Miguel Ruiz’s series on Toltec Shamanism
Actively Reading:
Eastern Body, Western Mind by Anodea Judith
Awakening Artemis by Vanessa Chakour: Red Clover chapter.
Wood Becomes Water by Gail Reichstein
Be Water, My Friend: Teachings of Bruce Lee by Shannon Lee
The Wild Remedy by Emma Mitchell
Goddesses in Older Women by Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD
Permission slips: Bohemian Magic by Veronica Varlow.
Watching:
Dune Part 2
Quote Pondering:
“To be like water, then, is to realize your most whole, natural and actualized self where you are living as much as possible in the slipstream of life as you forge your own path forward.” — Teachings of Bruce Lee
General Life:
Starting my Qi Gong 5 Elements practice again and combining it with my yoga, meditation and my balance physical therapy. Continuing to train Shadow and loving Figgy into his old age.
Keeping our heads and hearts on straight through the cascade of it all.
Love, Light & Shadows,
Isabella, Pups & Family
Thank YOU again for helping to support my Great Works!
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