Unusually, I’ve struggled the last couple of weeks to find something I wanted to write about for this post. At times I feel so heavily weighted with grief, fear, and despair about our world (and I mean our to include all people, all species, all life on this lovely, feverish planet suspended in the cool bed of space) and the apparent lack of sane, unified values and problem solving, it’s all I can do to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I’m sustained by my communities on Substack and in real life, my garden, and the simplicity of whatever moment of Now I inhabit. At this moment Now is the smell of chicken crisping in the air fryer, the cool, damp air of a July 4th morning in central Maine coming in open windows, the weight of my laptop on my lap, the feel of its keys under my fingers, and the sleeping cats. It’s a day off. I relish it.
Photo by NASA on Unsplash
I don’t want to write about the state of the world. I have nothing to add to the conversation that feels effective or positive. I’m one of the silent millions, maintaining faith and courage as best I can for my own sake as well as the sake of those around me.
Through the fog of sadness and fear a clear question rang in my mind: what would Baba Yaga do? And another: what gods am I following, and are they taking me home? And then, I can choosewhich gods to follow.
Sometimes I forget that.
Just like that, I was back in my power. I jotted down some quick notes and went off to work, feeling better.
Dr. Blackie didn’t mean this question in the formal religious sense, but in the metaphorical sense. Much of what is happening in the world now has to do with the gods people create, worship and follow. Not only real people but gods like money, status, technology, and power. To them we build temples, make blood offerings and human sacrifices. We worship them with our belief and our lives and place them above the law, feeding them with power, and they are rapacious.
No wonder Justice is blindfolded. I’m in complete sympathy. We should give her ear plugs, too.
Photo by Peter Hershey on Unsplash
I think a lot about gods and goddesses. I research their stories and cultures, explore their symbols, sculptures and depictions. I write about them, dream about them, and work with various card decks referencing them. I think about our consistent human propensity to reach for something larger than ourselves, something wiser, stronger, more powerful. We seek some sense of meaning, hope there is reason for all this chaos, that one day we will come back home to ourselves and our family of all human beings on Planet Earth.
Of all the gods and goddesses I’ve made friends with, I love Baba Yaga the best. I’ve written about her before on this blog. She’s Slavic, a hag goddess associated with witches (of course).
I don’t think of myself as a feminist, but the Baba is, for me, the perfect embodiment of female wholeness. She is not obedient or submissive. She is not attached to a man. She carries no shame, no guilt. She’s wild, primal, and powerful. She has feelings and expresses them. She lives proudly in her (conventionally) hideous body. (I’m sure she doesn’t shave, trim, deodorize, make up, color her hair, do her nails or dress appropriately for her age.) She cannot be silenced. She is wise and ancient beyond wisdom and years. She does not suffer fools. She pleases only herself.
A long time ago, in an audio production narrated by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, she said women were made for times like these. I haven’t thought about that in years, but the morning I read Dr. Blackie’s post I remembered it, and I stood a little taller as I made breakfast.
By Carmine Leo
Women, after all, know how to live in a desert. We know how to live underground. Like water, we learn how to go around obstacles and wear away stone. Women endure. We wait. We bide our time and survive. Individuals may be burned, or killed, or silenced, but collective female wisdom lives on in stories, skills and crafts, recipes, traditions and ritual. Women, as vessels of life, understand death. We know how to let die what must, even if it’s ourselves. We know endings are always beginnings.
These are not times for too-sweet maidens and princes on white horses. These are times for survival, clear seeing, hard choices, courage, cunning, and strength. These are times in which we must remember how to be responsible for our own safety, reproductive health and autonomy, and education. We don’t need permission. We don’t need approval. We don’t need men to take care of us. We’ve never needed those things; it’s time to recall and reclaim that truth and teach our younger sisters and daughters how to be wild and true.
We can always make choices. I have already left Ozymandias lying in the desert behind me. I will not follow fear and despair; they cannot take me home. I will not comply with repression and oppression, neither my own or that of others. I will not be silenced. I will resist. I will persist. I will face whatever comes with my head up. I will go around, or under, or over whatever or whoever attempts to control me.
I will choose which gods to follow home.
Questions:
Which gods have you followed in your life? Did they take you home?
Have you chosen the gods you follow, or were they thrust upon you?
What sacrifices and offerings have your gods demanded of you?
Leave a comment below!
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This post grew out of two seeds. The first was a piece by a substacker I follow who heard a phrase on a podcast about pleasure in discipline. It struck her that she’s good at finding pleasure in discipline (think productivity), not so good at being disciplined about pleasure.
This struck me, too. I’m quite disciplined when it comes to achieving goals and being productive, but it never occurs to me to apply that same discipline to pleasure. What a thought! How lazy. How irresponsible …
By Veljo Milic on Unsplash
Amused at my internal horror, I played with this idea for a day or two. Discipline is like a doorway, I mused. One can walk through it and into pleasure. Being a strong adherent of Work Before Pleasure (even though I know the work never ends), the doorway metaphor seemed appropriate. For a minute. Until I realized standing in the doorway of discipline, unable to move forward into pleasure, is no good, either. And that’s mostly what I do.
Sigh.
Then, I did my Mabon Tarot spread. I do this at every turn of the wheel. Mabon is Fall Equinox. It came and went while I was wading through paperwork, documents, emails, insurance, retirement investments, and the business of changing banks, cards, automatic payments, and transfer networks.
Did I mention paperwork?
Anyway, I did eventually get to pulling cards about a week after Mabon. The last card of the spread, the “overall outcome” card, happened to be the 9 of Stones (my deck), or the 9 of Pentacles (classic deck). In my deck, this card is the card of tradition, signifying reverence for past wisdom and sacrifice, and ancestral memory.
It stopped me in my tracks. Ever since my mother died in August (hence the endless paperwork), I’ve been preoccupied with family, past and present, living and dead, known and (mostly) unknown. Managing my inheritance has been fraught with guilt, shame, anguished memories, bewildered pain.
I don’t feel reverence. Whatever I feel, it’s not that. (Another thing to feel guilty about.) Whatever happened in my past context of family, I’ve found no wisdom in it. Plenty of sacrifice, though, mostly of and by me.
In the five days since I turned this card over, I’ve been thinking about it. It’s the traditional time of year for many cultures to remember ancestors, the time when the veil between the worlds grows thin, the time when the trees release their leaves to decay and sleep before the next season of growth.
Photo by fancycrave on Unsplash
The discipline of pleasure. And the pleasure of discipline.
Reverence for past wisdom and sacrifice; ancestral memory.
I suddenly remembered an old story I used to tell during this time of year, “The Corpse Bride.” It’s a story out of Jewish tradition. A corpse bride, still wearing her wedding finery, mourns her violent death as she was on her way to her wedding. She grieves for her lost opportunities. A living bride comforts her, vowing to fully experience all that the corpse bride dreamed of and lost. The corpse bride is then able to lie back in her grave and rest in peace.
These pieces seemed to answer a question I haven’t consciously asked. Discipline. Pleasure. Unquiet ancestors. Lost opportunities.
How do we connect with our ancestors in a healthy way? We’re only just beginning to understand epigenetics and the ways in which we’re linked to the generations who came before us. I know something about my DNA, but almost nothing about ancestors. When I think of ancestors, I think of a dignified group of people, wise, healthy, connected, at peace. When I think of my family, I think of rejection, dysfunction, and abandonment. I hardly knew my family, even the ones living during my lifetime. What I mostly knew was I didn’t belong, though I was a biological child of the people I called Mom and Dad.
I feel no connection to ancestors. My unconscious assumption is they wouldn’t want me any more than the family I knew did.
However. The fact is I do have blood ties and a biological family tree, as we all do. I have inherited certain characteristics, behaviors, weaknesses, strengths, and wounds through epigenetics as well as genetics and environmental factors. I am now a twig at the end of a branch on the family tree. Neither of my sons have children. I have no daughter. My two cousins are also childless, as is my brother. I am the last female in the last generation of my direct maternal line.
Me. The highly sensitive, passionate, sensual, creative, noncompliant one nobody wanted!
I dealt several Tarot cards of healing and recovery in that Mabon spread. Perhaps they’re not solely about my healing. In conjunction with the season and this powerful card of ancestry, perhaps I have an opportunity to heal myself and comfort? give peace to? palliate? propitiate? the women who came before me, the women who gave me life.
Whatever came before, I’m here now. I breathe. My heart beats. Half the family resources are in my hands. I have the power to make choices. I choose to continue forward into generosity, healing, and joy. I don’t have ancestral traditions or maps. No one ever gave me a map, because they didn’t know the way themselves. Maybe they didn’t want to go in that direction; maybe they stopped looking for the path. It doesn’t matter now.
What matters now is to live … because they can’t. Like the corpse bride, their earthly opportunities are lost. Maybe from the very beginning I was the one with the potential to bring my female ancestors peace at last, not because I complied with their oppression, but because I refused it. Maybe it’s my wisdom that’s needed, the map in my pocket we all must follow.
The women of my family taught me some of the pleasures of discipline. Perhaps I must teach them about the discipline of pleasure, of joy. Which means I must learn it myself first.
I swam yesterday. I’m required to train weekly for my lifeguard position, but that’s only a good excuse. I swim for pure pleasure. I relished every sensual detail, every rhythmic breath, every stretch and flex of my muscles, the silk of the water. I relished the hot shower afterwards, the long drink of water I took, my clean hair and warm and relaxed body. Because they never did, even when alive. Because they never can.
Yellow Boots
This Saturday morning I ran to the store. I took a deep lungful of the grey, humid air, heavy with the promise of coming rain. I savored it. I chatted with the cashier. I bought myself a luxurious dark chocolate bar. I deliberately splashed through a puddle in the parking lot with my bright yellow duckie boots. I smiled at strangers. I drove home with the window open and the damp air stirring my hair. Because they never did these things. (Well, maybe the chocolate. Mom did like chocolate.) Because now they never can.
I sit here on my couch with the cats, the laptop on my lap. I’m burning a scented candle, surrounded by a couple of sleeveless summer shirts I just bought on sale, my journal, lists, notes, the mail. I’m at peace. I don’t have pain. (Mom always had pain.) I’m content. I have friends I love and who love me. Life is good, filled with projects and plans. In a few minutes I’ll get up, put some laundry in, wash the dishes, stand in the doorway and look at the sky, feel the air stirring as the storm approaches. I won’t do these things because I’m disciplined and productive, or because I must, but because I can. I want to. I choose to. These are the small tasks of my life, and I love my life.
All these I’ll do for myself, and also for them, my ancestors, the women who came before me, my blood, my bone, the wombs who gave me life. Because they can’t.
They’re gone. (May they rest in peace.)
But I’m still here.
Questions:
What does the word ‘ancestor’ mean to you? Do you connect it with a real person in your life?
Are you prepared to be an ancestor? What wisdom would you pass on to younger generations?
Do you feel connected to the generations of family before you?
Would you like to be more deeply connected to living family members? What’s in your way?
Leave a comment below!
To read my fiction, serially published free every week, go here:
This post has been simmering in the back of my mind for some while. I’ve taken my time approaching it because it seems to be something of a landmine for some people.
Photo by Ester Marie Doysabas on Unsplash
In simplest terms, to be grateful is to be thankful.
It’s easy to be thankful for the things we enjoy and that make us happy. Thankfulness can also be a matter of routine or ritual, as in the case of saying grace before meals, or a display of good manners, like thanking a service person.
Those are the smiling, kindly faces of gratitude.
But gratitude can also wear the aspect of a hag, and then we’re in darker, grittier territory.
Part of the experience of life and relationship includes pain and trauma, there’s no getting around it. We all have a haunted cellar in our soul in which we have suffered. Sadly, many people live in that cellar, picking their scabs, reopening their wounds, and competing with others to win the Most Victimized and Best Haunted Cellar awards.
I’m not suggesting our feelings of disillusionment, pain, rage, fear, shame, betrayal and self-pity are wrong or inappropriate, nor am I victim blaming or shaming, taking some kind of high moral ground, or minimizing the tragic challenges and traumatic experiences we face in life.
Our inevitable wounds are not the point. The point is what we choose to do with them. Do we heal them or not?
It’s important to acknowledge some people don’t want to heal. Some find the payoff for chronic bleeding too seductive to want to stop it. I don’t understand this, but I know it’s so, and I respect that choice.
We can be a motionless victim or we can practice gratitude and allow it to sweep us forward. We can’t do both.
If we do want to heal, we have to give up blame. This is a big thing to let go of, and some will choose not to. Again, that’s a choice I can understand and respect. It’s also a dead end. If we insist on holding tight to our blame, we’ve cut ourselves off from the possibility of full healing. As long as we blame others or ourselves, we’re refusing to acknowledge our own responsibility and power.
Blame and responsibility are not the same thing. When I say responsibility, I don’t mean we’re necessarily responsible for our trauma. I mean our responsibility for how we handle it, and our responsibility for our feelings. Taking responsibility for our lives is empowering. Blame leads us into an endless loop of victimhood and/or self-hatred.
We can use addiction, compulsion, and other self-destructive behaviors to numb, distract, or forget our wounds, but none of those coping mechanisms help us reclaim our power.
Healing takes time and patience. Sometimes it takes years, or even decades. There is no shortcut around our feelings. We often need support. Healing can be a messy, exhausting, ugly, extremely vulnerable business.
Healing, like relationship, is a crucible, a dark womb in which we transform our wounds into scars. Gratitude is one of the agents of that transformation, but it can’t show up until we’ve begun to actively work through our feelings.
Photo by ivan Torres on Unsplash
Gratitude and forgiveness are often hand in hand. Note I did not say forgetfulness, but forgiveness. Scars are permanent reminders of our journey, but they need not be a matter of shame. We can choose to view them as medals of honor. We can choose to relate to others out of the empowerment and wisdom our scars represent rather than the wounds that caused them.
In every experience there is something to learn. We learn about ourselves. We learn about others. We learn about the way the world works. We learn about power. Learning makes us bigger, stronger, wiser, more effective, and more powerful in our lives. If what we learned is bitterness, we’re still blaming. We haven’t taken enough time, or found the right support, or finished the journey from wound to scar. Bitterness does not grow gratitude. It’s not empowering. It makes us small and shrivels our hearts.
We can’t control what other people do, but we can choose to see those who hurt us as teachers, learn the lesson, graduate, and be grateful. We can look back on the most uncomfortable experiences in our lives as the most meaningful and growthful.
Our culture encourages us to be dissatisfied with our lives as they are. We’re trained from childhood in longing and envy rather than in gratitude. The truth is if we can’t be thankful for what we have right now, this minute, we won’t be thankful for more money, a different body, a different job or house or car.
Thankfulness is acceptance of whatever our circumstances are in the now, even if they’re difficult and we need to change them. Especially if they’re difficult and we need to change them. If our lives aren’t working and we know it, we can be grateful for accepting what is (we’re miserable) and take advantage of the opportunity to learn to manage our power in such a way that we can make positive change. Misery is highly motivating.
So often we have an ideal in our heads, or a set of expectations, that keeps us reaching for more, or different. The practice of gratitude requires us to settle down and take a good long look at what we have, what we are, and where we are. What is there to learn? What can we be grateful for? Expectations are devoid of gratitude, because they don’t reflect reality.
Photo by Evan Kirby on Unsplash
Gratitude takes strength and courage, especially during dark times of pain, fear, and despair. It’s also one of the most powerful choices we can make. It leads us into the light. It comforts our raw feelings. It keeps us focused on joy, and the simple gifts in each day.
In seeking gratitude, we go deeper than we’ve gone before, far beyond the fact of our wounding. We reclaim our power, not over what happens to us, but how we use such events and circumstances to water and feed our best selves. To feel gratitude is to come fully into peaceful alignment with our lives, whatever they have been, whatever they are now, whatever they might be.
In the old tales, young women are sent on dangerous quests that involve learning to sort one thing from another. One such teacher is Baba Yaga, about whom I’ve written previously. Baba Yaga is a crone, and when she can be bothered, she teaches too-sweet maidens how to sort poppy seeds from dirt, how to cleanse, and how to cook.
Photo by ivan Torres on Unsplash
This is to be understood metaphorically, rather than as a statement of appropriate gender roles. Take a deep breath, all you feminists!
The idea of discernment, or the ability to tell one thing from another, is essential to living effectively, and, much like restraint, we are losing touch with it in today’s world.
Sorting poppy seeds from dirt, or wheat from chaff, or mildewed kernels from wholesome corn, is not something technology can help us do. It doesn’t require equipment, money, strength, or a college education.
It’s a hopeless task, of course, to sort poppy seeds from a pile of dirt in one night with no light and no help, but in stories it’s a task that must be done if the maiden wants to live. Usually a magical animal or some other helper arrives; symbols of the maiden’s intuition, kindness or compassion. Interestingly, the maiden often sleeps while the helper(s) accomplish the task.
Metaphorically, this indicates that our civilized, rational, logical intellect must step out of the way and allow creativity, faith and intuition to guide us. Fairytales and oral tradition map our subconscious, our shadow, our deepest and oldest foundations, the places where our primal wisdom lies. Sorting one thing from another takes time and close examination. Discernment involves our senses and our feelings as well as our intellect. It demands our consent to peer closely, and accept what we see. It can’t be done in the presence of denial. Fear clouds discernment, as do distraction, an unwillingness to be wrong, ideology, and an inability to think critically. Gaslighting, projection, distortion and deflection all work actively against our ability to see things clearly. Those who are unwilling to venture into terra incognita are unable to practice discernment, which involves learning and adaptation.
Modern life doesn’t require us to sort poppy seeds from dirt, but here are some places in which discernment is vital:
Differentiating between truth and lies
Distinguishing between friends and not-friends
Recognizing the difference between power-with and power-over
Realizing the difference between our beliefs and needs and those of others
Differentiating between love and abuse, or love and control
Distinguishing between kindness and enabling
Realizing the difference between useless and useful
Knowing the difference between what makes life easier and what makes it harder (simplicity and complication)
Understanding where our power is and where it is not
Noticing differences between words and actions (major red flag)
Differentiating between our own ghosts, struggles and wounds and those of others; in other words, do we take it all personally or blame it all on others?
Knowing the difference between our authentic selves and our pseudo selves
Recognizing the difference between what truly makes us happy and what the culture insists should make us happy
Discernment is not prejudice, hate or bigotry. The ability to tell one thing from another is a basic skill. I remember watching Sesame Street in the 60s when I was a child: “One of these things is not like the others. One of these things doesn’t belong.“
Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash
In this era of “alternative facts” and postmodernism, our ability to discern is taking a beating, and those of us who persist in attempting to clearly see and understand our world, ourselves, and others are often targeted on social media. Interesting, that a skill four and five-year-olds can learn is becoming demonized.
I ran into a great question a few weeks ago: “What gives you courage?” I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
Courage, the ability to do something frightening or having strength in spite of pain or grief, is not the absence of fear. If we have no fear we have no need of courage.
Photo by Stefano Pollio on Unsplash
Fear, in my experience, is multifaceted. My most private fears are about my own wholeness and worth. Then, there’s the fear of external forces, like a coward with a gun in the supermarket; the judgement or criticism of a loved one; or a personal loss, injury or illness.
Yet another kind of fear is one I suspect many of us feel right now, a sort of ill-defined psychic shadow, a general feeling of insecurity about the state of our world and the future. I try not to give it too much attention, but it’s always there, like a thin cloud between me and the sun. I know the only place I have power is right here, right now, in this moment, and I’m glad I’m typing at the keyboard rather than staring out the window and wondering what tragedy or catastrophe will be brought to my attention next and where it will all end.
Photo by NASA on Unsplash
Is that a kind of courage, staying intentional in the moment and managing our own power?
Perhaps.
So, what keeps us going in times like these, in spite of our fear?
Oddly, the first thing I thought of was a poem I read as a teenager. All these years I’ve kept it and thought about the wagon wheel that did not break, the faithful dog, the innocent child. I’ve long forgotten where I came across it and I don’t know who wrote it.
Journal Note Long Ago
Crossing the wilderness or the sea I take with me nobody who is afraid nor do I want with me the memory of a man or woman who is afraid.
I am afraid enough myself now—there are shadows and ghosts enough now—in the meshes of my corpuscles—and so I must not ask others to go.
I keep the memory of a dog who was never afraid, a wagon whose wheels lasted, a child who had not lived long enough to know the meaning of the words Yesterday and Tomorrow.
The second thing that comes to mind about the source of my own courage also seems peculiar, but on second thought it might be a way of talking about faith. If and when I am able to identify The Right Thing To Do in any circumstance, fear ceases to have any power over me. I certainly feel it, and sometimes it seems I’ll be ground into oblivion by it, but as long as I’ve breath and a pulse I will do what I believe is right, come what may.
This is a trait fanatics and zealots of every stripe share with me, a fact which makes me pause and shudder. There is a difference, though, between a suicide bomber or the aforesaid coward with a gun and me. I don’t pretend to know what’s right for others, only myself. I’m not interested in having power over other people, forcing my ideology on those around me or taking out my frustrations on others.
My sense of The Right Thing To Do always involves my integrity and intuition, and is not weakened by the judgements and criticisms of those around me. My integrity and intuition are my own. Only I can maintain them. Without them, I am nothing.
When people talk about faith, I generally think of religion, which can be a staunch support for courage as well as a powerful motivator. However, most religions I’m familiar with require submission to a so-called higher authority, either human and/or sacred text (the author of which is frequently unclear and the original of which was written in a language and context I’m unfamiliar with). Many good people build their lives on a bedrock of religious faith and are sustained by it. That is not my way. I will not sacrifice my personal power to an external authority.
Photo by Lilly Rum on Unsplash
Information and learning give me courage. Literacy and curiosity are gateways to understanding, compassion and revelation. The beauty and complexity of our world and our universe, the remarkable experience of being human, the persistence of life, the perspective of history, the indomitable creativity of the human spirit — all these inspire me and give me courage.
My study and practice of minimalism has given me courage. The more objects and distractions I peel away from my space, time and energy, the stronger and more peaceful I become. Serenity, it turns out, has everything to do with living with less stuff, needing less money and concentrating on the undistracted and undiluted abundance of each moment. I don’t need nearly as much as I thought I did. Peace, joy, clarity and courage immediately flower in the space freed from stuff. I have what I need. I am what I need.
Photo by Nick Grappone on Unsplash
And that brings me to the last big ingredient in my particular recipe for courage. Learning to know, love and trust myself has given me courage. Part of this has to do with the gifts of aging. I’ve done a lot, seen a lot, made a lot of mistakes and collected a lot of scars. Every day I learn a little more and heal a little more. I have allowed my experience in life to expand my compassion, empathy, intuition, wisdom and ability to love. I’m a resilient, adaptable survivor, and I know, no matter what happens, I’ll do my best to my last breath.
A poem. The Right Thing To Do. Information and learning. Minimalism. Self-regard. Mix well.
