The Daddy of All Nightmares

 

I had a nightmare night before last that is still with me, and I realized I need to write about it, to share it. I will warn you in advance that parts of my nightmare are quite gory, so if that sort of thing bothers you, I recommend you stop reading now. I will also say that I will refrain from gratuitously grossing anyone out, but I am a Word Shaman and I tend to paint rather vivid pictures with my words.

Having said all that, this was the dream: A very large cat staggered around my bedroom, trying to climb up on my bed. All of his legs (in the dream I knew with absolute certainty it was male) had been stripped of flesh about halfway down, and clearly he was in terrible pain. I remember feeling shocked and sickened at the sight of naked bone with bits of bloody flesh clinging to it, and the existing flesh and fur had jagged red edges. The cat had two holes in his torso — one on each side — that looked as though two extra limbs had been lopped off or yanked out. I remember also feeling sad that the cat could not climb up on the bed, since he seemed to want to so desperately.

At some point the cat transformed into a man whos limbs were in the same grisly condition, except now the naked bones of his arms and legs were clean and dry, and he seemed in much less pain. He turned toward me and asked me for help. We had an extended conversation then, and all I can recall is his request for assistance.

When I woke up yesterday morning, what came first into my mind was, “Okay, what rejected, suppressed, denied, hidden, or cut off part of me does Catman represent?” (I almost want to call him “Zombie Catman,” except that he was clearly alive.) After all the shamanic work I’ve done, I have come to understand that my nightmares are suppressed parts of me being very loud in order to get my attention. One of my teachers likened this to what happens when you ignore a child’s repeated requests for attention. First, they tug gently on your sleeve. You ignore them, and they tug again, this time adding a plaintive, “Mom!” You continue to ignore them (after all, you have a lot of work to do and only so many hours in the day), and eventually the requests become louder, more strident, and finally end in a full-blown temper tantrum. If nightmares are the temper tantrums of my inner children, Catman was sure as heck throwing a hissy fit on Tuesday night!

This is the second time I’ve written about this, and I have a deepening sense that Catman represents my own needs, specifically those needs that go unmet when I ramp up into co-dependent overdrive. Raised to be a caretaker, I believe that’s my job — to emotionally take care of all my friends and loved ones. NOTE: I’ve never really understood that phrase, so I’m going to stop using it. I love my friends, after all, so aren’t my friends also my loved ones? Anyhow, I take care of other people, chiefly through managing (or attempting to manage) their emotional states. When I do this, my own needs get shoved aside. After a while, this translates into fatigue, irritability, wild mood swings, and illness, as well as the resurfacing of addictions, most notably to food — especially sweets.

Now I am uncertain what my next step will be, except that I clearly need to focus more closely on taking care of myself, and letting my friends take care of themselves. Therein lies the challenge, because I have accumulated quite a few friends who (big surprise) want someone to take care of them. Striking a balance between their needs and mine — actually, strike that! Focusing primarily on my own needs is what I must do, and that’s challenging. In a way, doing that feels like closing my heart. Perhaps instead I can think of it as opening my heart to myself. Wish me luck!

Thank you so much for reading. As always, comments are encouraged and appreciated. Take care, and may your life find a marvelous balance that often spills over into joy.

~Love and Blessings,
Selene~

Grey Monday: Shingle Bells, Part II

I’m exhausted today, resting up for my evening plans. One friend called and wants a ride if I’m going to a certain reading tonight. She also wants to know if I’m going to another reading tomorrow. Another friend plans to call a little later today and expects me to be out and about — which I had planned to be. Yet another friend has emailed me about various events, including an international excursion. I wish I had all the money in the world, along with an endless supply of physical stamina and bonhomie. Being irredeemably human, however, I don’t and I don’t. Ah, well. C’est la vie.

Along with everything else, I discovered over the last few days that my visit with shingles is not entirely finished. I made some of my famous (in a small circle of friends, anyway) chocolate candies on New Year’s Day and (of course) ate my fair share of them. Shortly thereafter I received a return engagement from the ghost of shingles past. Luckily it really is just the ghost, with mild numbness and a shadow of the former pain. Just that, however, is leaving me tired right down to the marrow of my bones.

One of the gifts I got from my main event bout with shingles was this: I now remember that, whatever happens to me, I have a choice about how I see it. For example, yesterday evening I was driving home from a party and someone cut me off in the freeway exit ramp, speeding up to do so, then immediately switched into the opposite lane. For a moment I seethed with anger, spewing colorful epithets relating to the other driver’s family origins. Then I remembered: I have a choice here. Yes, it seems as though that person deliberately sped up just to cut me off. And maybe they really did do it on purpose. So I get angry because I want control, want to stop them from doing that. Since that’s impossible, how would I like to feel instead?

To make a long story shorter, I chose to feel grateful that I had survived the encounter unscathed. Feeling angry in situations over which I have no control stresses me out big time. Feeling grateful to be alive, fortunate to survive insane freeway driving, is an instant de-stressor. Since I am very sensitive to physical and emotional stress, choices such as this one are as crucial to my survival as careful defensive driving (and lots of luck).

So, thus endeth the litany of gifts gleaned from my ordeal with shingles. At least for now; more may surface in these first full-to-bursting days of the new year.

Take care, and may you shine divinely in 2009!

~Love and Blessings,
Selene~

Happy 2009

Love and peace and joy to you–
may your path be clear in this year that is new,
and may all your sweetest dreams come true.

Hope your new year is off to a marvelous start. Just wanted to dash off a quick post to wish you all the happiest of new years.

My sweetie and I rung in 2009 at a barefoot dance party, and today (it’s still January 1 in my part of the world) we’re going to my aunt’s hopping john party. Every year on New Year’s Day she has a party where she serves black-eyed peas and rice, or hopping john, among other delectable pot luck goodies. It’s a tradition in her branch of the family, and eating hopping john on January 1 means good luck will follow. Here’s hoping!

Blessings and warm wishes to you. Take care of yourselves.

~Love,
Selene~

Shingle Bells, Shingle Bells

Been a long time since I posted, and I wanted to get one in before the end of the year — perhaps even two. I recently recovered from shingles, and still have a tiny, itchy bit of rash to prove it. There’s even a bit of numbness lingering on the skin over my belly, no doubt from the nerve damage that is shingles’ gruesome signature.

If you are unaware of Shingles, you are susceptible to it if you’ve ever suffered from chicken pox. After the pox subsides, the virus that caused it lingers, lying dormant in the nerve cells along your spine. One day, as you approach middle years, it may manifest again as shingles. Chronic fatigue, undue stress, L-lysine deficiency and L-arginine surfeit (a diet high in chocolate and low in fish and eggs) are all conditions that can bring shingles (literally) to the surface. The only way to get shingles if you’ve never had chicken pox is through close contact (skin to skin) with someone  who has it.

I had never experienced nerve pain before — well, except for whacking my funny bone once or twice as a child — and I never want to experience it again. I can truthfully say this is the first time I’ve ever experienced prolonged nerve pain. I came down with it just before Thanksgiving, and the virus is only now subsiding.

I consider myself a fiery person: passionate, tempermental, excitable, and (for much of my life) rageful. I had never thought what it might feel like to have a conflagration traveling the nerve paths in my body, to feel stabbing and burning at the same time. The intensity of the pain brought me to tears over and over again. It also brought me emotional healing that perhaps could not have come any other way.

I believe every experience in life yields gifts — if I have the perceptiveness to see them. Shingles has been no exception. One great gift of this illness has been my sleep patterns returning to normal. I now regularly wake up in the morning, which is a profound change. For the past two years, I had severe insomnia. I would wake up whenever I woke up (usually long after noon), then stay awake the entire night, often not going to sleep until 6 or 7 am. I sometimes even forced myself to get up earlier, only to stay up even later. I tried natural sleep aids, including valerian capsules and myriad cups of chamomile tea, to no avail.

With shingles, my sleep patterns went completely haywire. I slept only when I could, which at first was hardly at all due to the pain. I slept once for 20 hours, then had a day or so where I could sleep only in three-hour increments. Now that the virus is (mostly) out of my system, I actually get sleepy at night, which is a big deal. I find myself nodding off before I expect to, and when I got to bed I actually sleep deeply, waking up usually after seven or eight hours.

Waking up earlier is a multi-layered gift. I get to have much more time in my day to accomplish my goals, and also allow myself the pleasure of taking my time. What a gift never to feel rushed! I never realized how much scrambling to make appointments, deadlines, airplanes and so forth added to my stress level. Today, for example, I have an appointment at 2 pm PST, and I am comfortably writing this blog entry in my new red-and-green flannel nightgown, feeling cozy and warm, knowing I can complete this and easily leave the house by 1:30, if not earlier. This seemingly small change is already yielding big benefits.

Another gift has been closer attention paid to my diet. I failed to eat enough protein, especially fish and eggs, instead relying on nuts and seeds. I also allowed chocolate back into my diet, and binged on it every so often. I know now that I need to cut way back on the chocolate and alternate starchy meals with fish or egg meals. Fish and eggs are high in L-lysine, an amino acid which can help prevent shingles. Chocolate is high in L-arginine, an amino acid which can cause a shingles outbreak. I can still have chocolate every so often, just not in large amounts and only if I remember to take my daily L-lysin capsules.

Another dietary gift is the realization of how healing my diet is in general. Instinctively I eat foods that are natural anti-virals, high in calcium, iron, and all manner of vitamins. Yay for me! Now I just need to reign in my love of sweets.

I have yet more gifts to list, and perhaps it’s appropriate to take a break here, and list them in a second post. My eyes and hands are tired, and I do need to get dressed before I leave the house. Well, perhaps “need” is a strong word, but I’d like to put on different clothes. It would be fun, and I love dressing up.

Thanks for reading. More later, I promise. Take care, and may your life find a marvelous balance that often spills over into joy.

~Love and Blessings,
Selene~

Coming Out of the Political Closet

It is my usual stance to refrain from talking about politics, and I must now come out of the political closet. As a feminist, I want women to have equality. We will lose any semblance of equal treatment under the rule of McCain and Palin. Please, please, please — if you care about women, about our lives, our rights, our place in this culture — vote for Obama and Biden. If you care about people, about men, children, and women of all races, shades, religions, political orientations, cultures, sexual orientations — vote for Obama and Biden. If you care about the Earth, our home, this green and fragrant land that gives us life — vote for Obama and Biden.

Ms. Palin has made one thing abundantly clear — she cares little for this beautiful planet upon which we live. I hold this Earth sacred, consider her a living, breathing being. In my belief system, this planet is my Mother, and the Mother of us all. I have been eating organic for many years, since way before it was trendy. I recycle everything I can possibly recycle. I have been making my own shampoo and laundry soap for more than 12 years. And the list goes on.

I do these things because I care about this planet, and about the people who live here. I want many generations to come to enjoy sunshine, blue skies, sunsets, sunrises; walks in the woods after a spring or summer downpour; sleek black cormorants swimming on the surface of a lake; the shade of grandmother and grandfather oaks, cedars, birches, manzanitas, pines; seas, rivers, lakes, streams, ponds calling, buzzing, splashing, teeming with life itself; herds of gazelles, giraffes, elephants, packs of hyenas, prides of lions running, hunting, mating, living out the normal span of their lives.

Ms. Palin seems deliberately unconscious about life, about the preciousness of what we take from our Mother Earth in order to stay alive. She is against abortion, yet — as seems true for so many Right (or would that be Wrong) Wingers — her political views are actually anti-children, because they are anti-life. She seems completely careless about whether there will be a planet for her children’s children to enjoy, and that feels less than supportive of life to me.

I have said all of my piece about politics that I wish to say at this time. Peace be with you all, and may you be present to the sacredness and beauty of each moment.

~Love and Blessings,
Selene~

Blogging and Housework

Given a choice between the two, I would much prefer to blog. My relationship to house cleaning is much like Dorothy Parker’s to writing: I hate cleaning, but I love having cleaned. The result is great, and I deeply enjoy it when my house is clean. I just don’t want to be the one who does it. Oh, well. Since I’ve been out of work for six months, ain’t gonna have the funds to hire a cleaning person anytime soon.

So my solution is to combine the two. I am writing my blog currently, and half the kitchen floor is wet from recent mopping. Once it dries, I’ll mop the other half. While that half dries, I’ll write more on this blog entry. Or perhaps I’ll write more than one today. Each time I post a new entry, I feel the desire to blog more often. Yet each time, I finish my entry and then forget about my blog for at least a month.

Speaking of my blog, I have been quite surprised by the statistics page. I’m amazed at the number of views some of my entries get. Actually, I’m amazed they get viewed at all, considering the vastness of cyberspace. There is so much to choose from, and always less time than I’d like. I’m guessing it’s the same for a lot of other people. I feel blessed and honored that my site gets as many views as it does.

Sometimes I play music and boogie while I clean. My favorite cleaning chore — or more accurately, the one I dislike the least — is sweeping. There’s something soothing about the shush-shushing of the broom bristles over the floor. Sometimes when I’m upset and need to dissipate a lot of negative energy, I’ll find myself sweeping the floor. That’s the closest I ever come to enjoying housework.

Well, thanks for reading. May I post more often to this blog, and reach more Internet-trolling souls. May you who read these posts find something helpful, even if it just a moment where the corners of your mouth turn up on a challenging day.

As always, comments are welcome, and may you leave them with a compassionate heart.

~Love and Blessings,
Selene~

Shamanically Dazed and Cosmically Confused

I feel as though I am waking from a very long sleep. I am reading Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Lifeby Marshall Rosenberg, and every 20 pages or so I put it down and cry. I feel deep pain in realizing how violently I have communicated most of my life, especially with myself. Even now, I struggle to put aside shame, to stop blaming myself for past words spoken in anger or in haste. Words are my reason to exist, and my sorrow at using them to ever hurt another, even if out of my own pain, is great.

I am also in the midst of a nine-month training course to become a Shamanic Soul Coach. Those of us in the course have one full day of training and one two-hour long teleseminar each month. This month, our training consisted of examining our relationship to money and success. I am still processing the emotions stirred up by the new information I now have about myself.

For one thing, I rediscovered that I move at a slower pace than most people. This has always been true, and I have denied it, pushing myself to spend enough time in the fast lane so I can appear to be “normal.” I often get feedback from other people to hurry up. My mother once told me that it drove her crazy to watch me butter a slice of bread. My memory is that I used the butter knife like a paint brush, pretending the bread was a blank canvas. I took my own sweet time spreading that soft, yummy yellow stuff into every corner, cranny, and nook of a piece of bread.

What I have realized is that this slower rhythm is the rhythm of my heart. Western culture in general — and American culture in particular — urges us to move at the faster rhythm of our heads, our thoughts. My path seems to be to feel my way through the world.

I’ve been looking for part-time contract work for the past five months, and lately I’ve had a lot of “false positives.” What I mean by that is I keep getting offered work and when I closely examine all aspects of it — fees, contractual obligations, circumstances under which I would be working — I find the only answer I can give is “No.” I’m realizing that what I’ve done is slowed the process down. In the past, finding work has always been faster, in part because I take the first thing that comes along. Now I’m choosing to be choosier, so I can take on work that feels right to me.

Where these two things tie together — nonviolent communication (NVC for short) and the slow pace at which I move — is that I have been chastising myself for failing to learn NVC more quickly. I need to jump off the judgment train, cut myself some slack. When the time is right, the right work will come and the money will follow. And when the time is right, I will begin to speakin the language of nonviolence, which will fall from my lips as though I learned it in utero.

After all that, you may be feeling just as dazed and confused as I have. Watch this space for further (and much more frequent) posts, which will explain everything. Once I figure it out, that is.

Thank you for your kind attention. Comments welcome, as always. I appreciate your regard.

~Love and Blessings,
Selene~

Sadie Hawkins Day

I have no idea what I’m even going to write. I just want to get a post in before February is over! May seem silly, but I’ve never yet let a month go by without one post, at least.

I’m exhausted and recovering from a very nasty cold, which is (thank goddess) almost gone. This weekend is lightly scheduled for a change, so I’m confident my cold will be completely out of my system by Sunday evening.

My birthday is coming up. On March 18 I will have resided on the planet for 49 years. I’m feeling some grief about aging, especially about the way we are treated as we age. I saw a sketch on a comedy show recently, and as I watched it I felt more and more sad. The sketch showed a group of attractive young people vomiting into buckets. They were all disgusted because they were having sexual realtionships with aging celebrities. Never mind the fact that they all chose to sleep with these celebrities (at least in the premise of the sketch). Apparently choice made no difference. They were sick to their stomachs at the thought of wrinkles and thinning skin, greying hair and flabby necks.

I wonder if it occurs to the people who write these things that someday they, too, will be older. I would love to see this culture as a whole deepen its relationship to aging. I am finding many gifts in growing older. As I age I love myself more. As I age, I become more intuitive. As I age, I become more open-hearted and open-minded. As I age, I take better and better care of myself.

Next year, when my body vessel turns 50, I’m pulling out all the stops! I’m going to rent a hall and/or dance studio and have the biggest celebration I can manage.  So far this year I’ve heard about so many deaths: Heath Ledger, at only 28; a close friend’s mother; another friend’s sister; yet another friend’s uncle; a writing community acquaintance who was just one year younger than me — and the list goes on.

So, when I turn 50 next year, I’m celebrating it for the incredible milestone it is! I’m grateful to be making it to 49, and I’ll be fortunate to make it to 50. Life is sweet!

As always, thank you for your kind attention. Take care.

~Love and Blessings,
Selene~

The Dam has Burst

All my life my emotions have run deep. I held them back for years, stopping short of full expression because there was just so much to express. I felt overwhelmed when strong emotions would rise up inside me. I felt safe openly expressing only one: anger.

Thanks to a recent session with an amazing Shamanic Soul Coach (and many previous, leading up to this one), I am now minus my inner judge and the dam has broken. I find myself weeping several times a day, and just as quickly I move to a thought or memory that brings laughter. Often I laugh so deeply that tears come. For the first time in my life, I see that this is normal. This is me.

My very first therapist once said to me, as I sat in her office weeping and wracked with shame, pain, and grief, “I know this is challenging for you, but don’t you feel alive?” I got angry because all I felt was pain. I felt raw and vulnerable and yes, alive, but I couldn’t see that as a good thing.

Now, as I sit here typing this message and cycling through my emotions, I know what she meant. I feel alive and in my body. I feel open. I feel free.

Last night I forgave myself for deciding never to have children. I was unaware of the guilt I’ve carried all these years for making that decision, and last night I remembered myself as a young woman and knew I had made the right decision. I was so raw, so wounded. I had so much rage and so much shame. I would have passed those burdens to my children. In a rage I might have injured them irreparably — in their bodies and their souls. In doing so, I would have destroyed myself.

What a mix of emotions I feel in this moment: grief, regret, elation, joy. And underneath them all, a new-found peace, freshly born and a little wobbly, yet definitely there. Thank you for reading and for witnessing the first steps of this new self, one who approaches the world from a foundation of acceptance and peace rather than rage. Now I want to sing! And so I shall. . .

~Love and Blessings,
Selene~

These are the Sacred Colors

It is rare that I get a song delivered to me in a dream, complete with melody. Well, to be more accurate, I’d say it’s a chant. In my dream I knelt in front of a low wooden table and held an orange and black hair tie (at least, that’s what it looked like to me). It consisted of a circle woven of black and orange cloth, topped with a beautiful orange cloth rose. I grasped the circle with flower, raised up my arms, and sang:

These are the sacred colors,
these are the colors sacred.
They decorate my altar
as each season changes.

This is a little less clear, but I think I was also wearing orange and black in the dream. I knew exactly why the colors were sacred, what they meant. They represented sunlight and its absence, earth and sky, life and death, enlightenment and the void of ignorance.

I woke up thinking of my love of colors, of wearing certain colors — especially during the holidays. I had the idea that the most sacred color for New Year’s Day would be white — the color of new beginnings, of clean slates, of innocence original and reclaimed.

Perhaps I will wear white tomorrow. Tonight, I have yet to decide what to wear. I had plans to go out, and I woke up not only with a mind filled with images from my dream, but also with a headache and a sore throat. Whether or not I go out tonight and tomorrow, I will honor the message of my dream. When I intuit between the lines, I think the deeper message is this:

The sacred is in every moment, in every mote of dust, in everything that ever was or will ever be. Live sacredly. Honor your life and all that it contains.

And I say, what better time to begin than on the Eve of the New Year? My spider sense tells me 2008 is going to be an amazing year.

As always, thanks for reading. Happy and Sacred New Year to you.

~Love and Blessings,
Selene~