I'm tired.
Physically, yes, from a late night spent listening to the sounds of harmony and celebration, as they filled our sweet Edwardian Victorian home, while I lay upstairs, feeling unwell in my expansive bed. And, I'm emotionally tired, too. Tired of all of the movement (shockingly). Yes, I am grateful, as ever, for the opportunity to purge more of the stuff that can accumulate like dust in my life. And, still, my meager amount of things feels like a damn ball and chain. "I just want to fly," my Spirit screams. Nonetheless, I move through the motions of this American life - "getting rid" of a lot, boxing up other items and moving them back into storage (Again! Grrrr....). There's also some sadness in here, too. 2012 has been a year of death.
I stopped in to see a neighbor of my parent's this past week. Growing up next to her Palestinian-Lebanese family, I discovered comfort in the pungent aromas of fresh baked pita bread that permeated their house. Over the past four months, she lost her youngest son to his four-year fight with brain cancer as well as her ailing husband who simply gave up after their beloved Charlie died. I sat with her in a quiet family room, remembering all of the vibrant life that had once filled that house. It was the eerie silence that feels so abnormal. Death is natural. What isn't normal is the way we have distanced ourselves from its presence. I endeavor to live in a diverse village where people are born and die - the revolving door of life's sweet miracles swingin' as I dance merrily to its beat.
Today, a group of five beautiful, young women stopped in to Las Raices to check out the property after they saw it advertised for rent on craigslist. "We want to create a feminine collective," they said, and all Has and I could do was to look at each other and grin. That's the thing about planting seeds - we can't dictate how they will bloom, we can only intend that they will burst forth and produce life. "A tangerine and lemon tree!" one of the women exclaimed, as they were checking out the back yard. "If you only knew," I thought to myself, as I reflected on the Owl Medicine that we buried under the Lemon Tree in October and our dearest Buckbeat, who we laid to rest under the Tangerine tree in November.
The past six months have been exactly what my Spirit has needed. Sinking into sisterhood in my daily intimacies with my housemates and, then, claiming my healing by declaring my Medicine Woman ways has been a goddess-send. Last night, when I quietly wandered around the party at our house, many of our peers kept asking me what I am up to come the New Year. "I am open," is my less complicated response - yet, all I know is that I am ready to burst out of my own self-imposed shell. I've been willingly trapped in here for far too long now. Thus, I build forward, with my head down, intending my destiny as I've always dreamed it and beeyond!
