Hello little love bugs!

Great apologies for the long absence!  Here is what I have been up to.

GRAD SCHOOL

Let me just tell you, I was unprepared for the giant clusterflug that this would become.  I love Pacifica.  I mean that, I love, love, love LOVE Pacifica.  

Joseph Campbell sat on the board and influenced all of the curriculum.

If you’ve never met his work, get his interview with Bill Moyers off of Netflix.

I listened to the cassettes of that series during the nineties and it changed the course of my life.

I am certain that listening to those cassettes on my drives between college and my mom’s back then, coupled with daily reading of the book Simple Abundance, are the reasons the seeds were planted for me to get clean and sober when the time came.

Pacifca houses his archives, and embodies his spirit.

Female contemporaries of his also influence the approach–Marija Gimbutas and Marion Woodman.

The school’s mission?  Animae mundi colandae gratia:  for the sake of tending the soul of the world.  The material is alive for me in ways that only quiet self-study has inspired me in the past.  Now, I have a whole community around it!  My cohort are some of the most incredible people I have ever known.  Why?

Because they are doing the real work–work on themselves–to be genuine, authentic individuals.  To not hide behind defenses, and at the same time not be apologetic about the messiness that living “real” causes.  It is the safest, most empowering environment (among them I mean) of my life.

BUT HOT DAMN IS DOING THAT KIND OF REAL WORK EVERY DAY ABSOLUTELY EXHAUSTING!!!!!

We had a paper due for the end of winter term that knocked the wellness right out of me.  I mean that.  I chose to explore a very painful time in my life during which drug and alcohol abuse consumed me.  I was hospitalized for it.  

I wrote my paper from the perspective of a soul journey, instead of the classic medical box of illness-diagnosis.  The grief of re-living that time hit me at the same time as a gnarly cold in my lungs.

I also was trying to write the paper while with a man that I have a long emotional history with, and he and I are consciously working on the emotional defenses we use, and why.

The lungs are where we hold old grief.  Breathing shallow, or not being aware of how we breathe, protects us from our feelings!  Our feelings, and processing them, is the way to move into deeper experiences of our self.

So my lungs were thick and infected and I felt so, so sorry for me!  I really had to stop everything in my life and just take deep, nurturing care of my self.  No figuring anything out!  No work on my heart with my head, which is an old behavior I can slide into that always, always hurts me even more.

I took an incomplete on the paper.  I stopped writing: on here, at my guest site, with my partner and my writing circle.  I stopped surfing and bike riding. Twitter and FB.

I slept, for two straight weeks, and laughed at shows on Hulu, a lot.  Work was the only other place I gave energy.

Then my period came and I could let out the grief.  At school, this past weekend.

That’s the joyous part of working with my rhythms, not forcing the process, and knowing for sure that PMS is a far deeper indicator of where my emotions are stuck in my body.

I will write more and more about this!  But don’t want to overwhelm with information…

Just know I am well again, and happy to return!

Stay tuned this week.   I’ve got info about today’s New Moon…