musemother

Soul Food (and Chocolate) for the Woman's Heart

2012-02-14T14:26:00.000-05:00

http://www.itimes.com/files/blogfiles/184708/karate-bradley-stressed-out.jpg

Soul food for thehungry woman’s heart

It's Valentine's Day and High Time you reclaimed your spiritual Mojo ! Give yourself some long overdue self-love and attention byfollowing these tips:

The biggest Mojo killer is Stress. So what can you do to de-stress? Dr Susan Mertz Anderson says stress is just a thought, it doesn't come from circumstances, which is an interesting way of looking at things. Stop taking those thoughts so seriously (it only leads to anxiety). Change your focus by learning how to breathe for calm, to center and groundyourself.

Three part breath: breathe in the for count of four or five, hold the breath for the same count, then exhale for four or five. Just a few moments of this calm breathing will remove 90% of your stress.

One of the reasons we get stressed is cause we say yes when we mean No. Learn how to stand your ground and not be such a push over. Simplify your life – say no, more. Shake the 'should's....it's your shoulders that will feel lighter.

On top of this, it's stressful trying to please other people: we want to perform well for our bosses, or be perfect hostesses, perfect friends, perfectly dressed fashionistas; we each have our little areas of weakness where we compare ourselves to someone more 'perfect'. Stop making yourself miserable with comparisons. Repeat after me: I am fabulous and flawed!

A great de-stresser: clear and declutter the mind – write in your journal - get it all out on paper. What's really driving me crazy is.....then let it rip.

Unplug and give yourself permission to turn off the blackberry,email, or cell phone during lunch or after you get home. Your brain will be less overwhelmed if you give yourself a breather at some point in the day. Take a walk at lunchtime, force yourself to leave the desk (home office too!). Forgetabout work for a while, recharge and refresh your batteries with some oxygen.

Know your limits, you are not a machine; honour how you feeland practice self-compassion. Knowing how to avoid stress builds health.

Now for rebuilding that spiritual Mojo, grab a piece of some 80% dark chocolate and make yourself a list:

What is working for you? What feedsyou? What drains you? Take stock of your life. Where is good energy coming in, and where is all your energy going out, with no return?

What did you used to love to do? When was the last time you did it? It's time you got out there to shake your booty again, whether by hiking, skiing,skating, dancing - bust out those Latin moves and salsa,zumba, cha cha cha. Even better, find a friend to join you.

If you have a creative streak that has been languishing on the back burner, it's time to mother the creative fire in you. You know that the eggs are growing indarkness where you planted them; but they might not end up seeing the light of day unless they feel the sun’s warmth. How can you nourish the invisiblebirthing being prepared? What keeps your creative fire humming? soft music, a wide blue sky, reading poetry? It's your turn to create now, the world is waiting for your unique voice or splash of colour, so bring forth your creation into the world - make theunknown known!

Here are some affirmations for nourishing your spirit:

Today I give myself permission to go at the pace of mybreathing, and not push the river....

I am a co-creator with the creator.

I let go and trustthe creative process.

I love my life!

Now you can eat that chocolate :)

namaste

Musemother

ps If you want to really get your chocoholic moving, try IKOVE acai and chocolate face cream, organic botanicals that smell like chocolate, great for your face, easy on your figure.http://www.ikove.com/

Mid-life and Exhaustion

2012-02-10T13:32:00.000-05:00

She pictured herself hanging on withall her fingers to a wooden dock, and then, after hours of cramping hand pain,finally just lifting off her fingers, letting go of the dock, letting thegentle water and waves pull her backwards, like a pair of huge motherly armsgently tugging on her from behind, guiding her down river. It would be so easy,to just fall back, stop striving, stop rushing, stop getting things done, movebackwards instead of forwards. Why do we always have to run forward, moveforward, progress? she thought. The sense of accomplishment was nothing to her now. It onlyburdened her, the constant list of things to do. She wanted to refuse tofunction with goals and lists, although all her life it had kept her organized, sane,functional.

Now she simply wanted, if she couldadmit to the truth without guilt, she very much wanted to let go, and stop.Everything. Deadlines. Doing. Shopping. Decorating. Renovating. Driving.Registering. Volunteering. Managing. Coping. At a very deep level, the fear ofher inner blank slate was going away. She wanted that white room. Actually, thefear was rising to the surface and she was seeing it, instead of hiding behindthe business. And now that she looked at the fierce holding on out of fear inthe face, she no longer could do it. Something, some vision of a deeper life,some need for inner psychic peace and ease, called to her. How ignore it, whenshe was so exhausted anyway?

July 7, 2005

The above is a short entry from my journal, which I thought I might develop into a short story. I post it hear to remind myself that I was NOT always feeling so great and energetic as I am now. In fact, 6 years ago, I was in the midst (nearly at the end) of a mid-life transition that included fatigue, overwhelm, anxiety, mild depression probably (from the sounds of it) - plus my father had recently passed away, and my kids were hitting puberty. It does get better, I promise, if you take good care of yourself.

My advice to myself, and to you, dear reader, is to REST. The only real medicine for exhaustion according to Susun Weed (and there's a chapter about this in The Tao of Turning Fifty) is to rest, do nothing, lower your expectations, reduce your responsibilities to the absolutely essential, before you end up breaking down and being out of commission anyway.

You can take all the herbal supplements, caffeine or stimulants in the world, but if at the base of it, you are really really tired, allow yourself more time for REST.

enjoy the mid-winter mildness,

Jenn/Musemother

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Journaling and Self-Care

2012-02-07T15:19:00.000-05:00

There are so many benefits of journaling, but one of the main things it gives me is a sounding board for how I feel. It's a place to check in and do a quick scan - mood, physical body, spirit health, sense of presence, absence.

Sometimes I write down my dreams first thing so I can remember them later and try and figure it out. Sometimes it's a huge Wah! to the universe - feeling stuck, confused, not sure how to get out of this one, no solutions in sight.

Mostly though, by the time I get to the bottom of the page, I've found something - a shift in mood, an answer to a question, a softening, a little more hope. Usually, I find it helps me take stock of where I am and what I need right now.

I also write affirmations - something I'm beginning to put more faith in. The more I read (all over the web, O Magazine, blogs) the more I hear about the neuroscience of positive thinking - using your words carefully to call to you more of what you love, what you want to receive. I am creative, I am loving, I am resourceful, I find answers to my challenges....

Someone on facebook recently admitted they had a swearing problem, and I know I do that usually in the car at other drivers, or when I stub my toe or bump a hip into the pointy part of the table (moving too fast around those corners). Then I read, that instead of cursing the other drivers, you should send them blessings, for the words you speak boomerang back to you. Since I need the patience and blessing of those around me, I think this is a good practice. Just another way to practice affirming my good...

I know how easy it is to let the inner critic take over, if you're not careful, and write yourself into a self-critical rut. Don't. Just back up, and start over. You can find something nice to say....and if you can't, if everything seems rotten and dumb and you've lost your mojo, reach out to your Inner coach, (imagine a best friend or make-one up) who would be totally non-judgmental and supportive, and let her respond to the critic - If you were your own best friend, what would you say? "I know you had one too many pieces of chocolate, Jennifer, and your scale is telling you that Super Bowl extravaganza of chili, chicken wings and Bavarian cream was too much of a good thing, but look - you got outside today and walked one extra kilometer in the sunshine!"

Make your journal a place to dialogue with that inner friend, or higher self, or Inner Wise Woman and fire the inner critic. Another way to do this, is to imagine you are eighty-five years old, looking back at the you of today - and write yourself a letter. You'll be surprised at how much wisdom you own already.

Take good care of your Self,
Musemother

Letter to a Teenage daughter on Sexuality and Love

2012-02-06T12:48:00.001-05:00

NB This is one of my most popular posts, but I realize I did write the letter after posting this a few years ago, and never included the full version - so ladies and mothers and girls, here it is. Feel free to use it as a model for your own letter.

Musemother

Dear Daughter (insert name here)

Wow! You’re already fifteen.

And what I want totell you is how important it is for you as a girl to know how to trust your body's instincts, and also protect that. I wish I could say that the world haschanged since I was a teenager, but unfortunately, there are still doublestandards in our society that do not honour female sexuality. Advertising andfashion encourage young girls to be sexy and desirable, and yet society punishes themfor acting on their desires. I know it was confusing for me. I lost myvirginity at age 15, almost 16, under dubious circumstances not entirely of myown choosing. A lot of it was peer pressure, from friends thinking it was‘time’ for me. I know these are not the same times, (the 70’s, sex drugs androck’n roll) and you are not me. Most likely your experience will be verydifferent, but there is still lots of pressure on girls to ‘give out’, to ‘givein’, or to go too fast.

I think the importantthing is to cultivate respect for your body, to have good boundaries, to knowyour own limits and what you feel ready to experience. I guess go slowis the best way to put it. Don’t let anyone else be in the driver’s seat –that’s where you are.

You may not be thinking about this yet, but I'd like to tell you that being avirgin is a good thing, in spite of what other people may tell you. Having sexis about choice, your choice, your timing, not your friends'timing or a boy’s timing. You should know that oral sexis still sex, and girls often feel it’s degrading toprovide this as some kind of service to boys who give little or nothing inreturn, not to mention the risk of disease, herpes, etc. I hope you also knowthat the cachet of being popular does not make it worthit. You already know about the dangers of drinking and drugs - how a girl mustalways keep her head together, because alcohol and pot lower her resistance,loosen her inhibitions and her common sense (which you have loads of, but everyone loses itsometimes, under social pressures). It seems unfair, but it’s still the girlswho have to keep their heads on straight, even if their emotions and desire arepulling them to experiment sexually. There are lots of ways to get close and have an intimate connection withsomeone (or with yourself), that don’t involve penetration or getting pregnant.

Women/girls makelove for different reasons than boys I think. Heavenknows there are lots of sensitive boys and men out there, but our needs aremore emotional - we bond quickly, we fall in love easily, withoutnecessarily being ready to give of ourselves fully in that way. Sometimes ourgenerous natures can work against us and we give too much away. Making loveforges emotional links, little threads of love and needget woven into our psyches from us to the other person. We can't break thosebonds as easily as some guys can. We expect our love to be returned and it's notalways forthcoming.

I know I can'tprotect you from heartbreak, but as your mom, I want you to honour your ownknowing, your own limits, and feel your own self-worth. You are worthy of allthe love, honour and respect a person can give you.

Remember that you arethe guardian of your soul’s temple, this body you have been given, and alwayslet your intuition and inner knowing guide you. I hope you will feelcomfortable talking about this, when the day comes, if you need help.

Love, your Mom

Where Did My Libido Go? Mid-life Women Wonder

2012-02-01T16:15:00.001-05:00

extract from The Tao of Turning Fifty, What Every Woman in Her Forties Needs to Know, Little Red Bird Press 2012

Oursense of womanhood is inherently linked to our sexuality. Maybe that’s why somewomen mourn their youth at menopause. They think they will lose theirattractiveness to the opposite sex and there goes their womanhood. However, according to Dr Christiane Northrup, there is evidence that some women experience a reawakening of theirlibido at mid-life. Scientists say a woman’s sexual peak is probably somewherein her forties. Then again, some others experience a temporary deadenedfeeling: where oh where, did my libido go?

Iwas one of the ones who momentarily (for a few years!) lost touch with my desire. This was when I still had fairly young children and not sleeping well, on top of being perimenopausal. I think it was largely a matter of fatigue and timing. It turns out I am more easilyaroused in the morning than at midnight when I’m half asleep! Talking aboutthings certainly helped, once I became brave enough. My marriage might not havesurvived if I had not decided to take matters into my own hands (veryliterally). Two books that helped me understand the difference between women’sand men’s sexuality are John Gray’s Venusand Mars in the Bedroom and ReclaimingGoddess Sexuality by Linda E. Savage, Ph. D.

NowI can give myself permission to enjoy gourmet sex when I need it (meaning a lotof time for foreplay), or allow my husband a quickie occasionally. I feel more comfortable asking for what I needand less pressured to be available sexually when I don’t feel like it. Think ofit this way: you might be letting your partner off the hook. He may also beexperiencing a slowing of desire at his male andropause.

A lot has beenwritten about the differences between male and female desire, and I’m not surewe can generalize, but certainly women’s arousal often starts in the head –with being courted, talked to and listened to, which creates a feeling ofcloseness or intimacy. Dr. Micheal Goodman considers himself an expert on this.He says, “Men’s sexuality is linear: desire leading to arousal leading toerection and sexual intimacy. Women are different; their sexuality is morecircular and circuitous (“women need a reason for sex; men just need a place”),and starts with intimacy, not desire.”[1]This inherently makes sense to me.

Ifit’s painful sex that is slowing you down, don’t wait; get advice from your healthcare provider. Or try herbal teas or tinctures like oatstraw and nettle whichhelp relubricate the vagina. Certain homeopathic remedies help too. I have foundsome natural lubricants (Sexy Ganga, madewith hemp oil) are more compatible than the artificial ones made of petroleumproducts (if you wouldn’t put it in your mouth, it doesn’t belong in yourvagina). Susun Weed’s New MenopausalYears the Wise Woman Way is a very helpful book in this regard, with lotsof herbal remedies for each malady.

Whateverhappens, don’t give up on sex just because of a few hormonal changes. A salivatest can help you find out which hormones are lacking (progesterone, estrogenor testosterone). See Dr Christiane Northrup’s book, The Secret Pleasures of Menopause for a thorough discussion of all things sexual.

Thatbeing said, consider that a time of sexual abstinence may be called for tohonour your own need for rest, and to give you a time to find your wholenesswithin. Sex is wonderful, when you feellike having sex. Not out of guilt or a habit of pleasing others. Can you standyour ground, be with your own desire or lack of desire? Be patient withyourself and know that your desire is not gone for good.

[1] www.drmichaelgoodman.com/ten-best-tips-for-surviving-your-menopause/(author of Men-opause – a book aboutmenopause for men)

Mid-life transition hits men too

2012-01-26T19:43:00.002-05:00

I've been so focused on writing for women, that I've missed something crucial about the mid-life transition. Men feel it too! Some men get so stressed that researchers have given it a name, IMS, Irritable Male syndrome. No, it's for real, I found this on a website at http://midlifetransition.org/.

According to Men's Health Magazine up to 30% of men experience it: some of the symptoms are
hypersensitivity, anxiety, frustration, and anger. Your mid-life man may be tired, and tired of being tired, not feeling understood, not as prone to be sexually as active as he was and tending to feel depressed about his life and accomplishments. According to some doctors mentioned on this site, lower testosterone levels are at the root of it. It's male menopause, or Andropause.

What's different from women is that men deny anything is wrong and don't talk to anyone about it because they are supposed to be the strong ones, holding the fort together, never showing emotional weakness, plus they often have difficulty talking about their feelings, especially around their sexuality.

If you are a woman in mid-life, you are most likely married to a man in mid-life and you may recognize some of the symptoms. It's probably easier to refer your favourite sufferer of IMS to a website, so have him check out the site linked above on the mid-life transition. Especially if you think he may be depressed, and have trouble reaching out for help. Dr William Pollack from Harvard is quoted as saying mid-life crisis is a code word for male depression, and it can be treated.

In any case, the word transition says it all - this is usually a temporary state - and if one does a little bit of soul searching and reflection, one comes through the other side with a deeper understanding of the human experience.

ps men's self-medication favourites as listed on this site: alcohol, TV, sports, and sex.
women's self-medication: food, friends and 'love'. Interesting differences....

jenn/musemother

My Manifesto on Self-Care

2012-01-24T10:20:00.006-05:00

For the second time in two days, I’ve read that self-help booksare full of clichés like: learn to slow down, take care of yourself, eat healthygood food, get regular sleep, journaling (this from a book review on a book foryoung women to help them get beyond high heels and shopping). Hello! When didrigorous discipline and self-love become cliché? That makes it sound so easy, likeanyone can do it with their eyes closed.

Actually, it’s one of the hardest things in the world toaccomplish, until you decide it’s a priority – to get the right dose of balance in youroverly busy life, to make sure the things you spend the most time on are thethings that really matter, to carve out some down time to take care of yourbruised soul in this wearying roller coaster existence of 24-7 productivity andbusyness. The goal being to not justsurvive but thrive. To have a happyhealthy whole attitude towards life – every day I commit to taking bettercare of my inner Self in a world that honours only the success of my outerSelf, i.e. the number of techno gadgets I am attached to, the number of fabulousexotic trips I take a year, the shape and colour of my wardrobe, the size of mypurse....is a commitment not to something cliché but rather to being a more realhuman being.

So forgive me if you’ve heard this before, but I need to bereminded continuously that self-care is not selfish. I need to be reminded thatfocusing on what feeds me, and surrounding myself with like-minded folks whoencourage that quest for balance in me, is where I start to feel human. Theoverstressed, yelling-all-the-time person who constantly criticizes herself (and others) forbeing too lazy, too self-indulgent and too slow is so yesterday. I do not want to live under the shadow of my inner critic, whose bark andbite are sneakily nasty. I have over identified with that little voice for fartoo long. I finally feel I deserve some self-love, just like I deserve a soothing massage whenI am too wound up, and alone time to write in my journal and betterunderstand myself. I now know that whenI am kind to myself it helps me be kind to others, and the world is a muchbetter place when we are feeling kind. Yes, I am flawed, I'm not there all the time, but it is a fabulous goal to work on.

If that is cliché, well it’s one that hasn’t been usedenough by the world in general to become cliché really (at least, not overused yet). When kindness,compassion and love are the norm, maybe then we can say it’s a cliché.

So take that, Book Reviewers of the world. The Tao of TurningFifty is coming out in a few days, the end of January I hope, once I approve thefinal proof. And it will be full of clues, tools, and tips for self-care. Touché,cliché.

Shit Menopausal Women Say

2012-01-16T17:54:00.000-05:00

Alright, I saw the youtube videos, shit girls say, and boy, they repeat themselves alot. I think menopausal women should have more to say than the following samples, so I'm inviting you to come up with some good ones.

Hey, is it hot in here? or is it just me?
Can you open that door/window?
Where are my glasses?
What did I come in here for?
Where are my keys?
Did I lock the door? no, I think I ... oh yeah, it's locked.
Senior moment!
Neat!
Groovy!
Oh that is so sixties! seventies....
I am so turning into my mother....
look at that wobbly bit under my chin....
does my butt look big in this?
look at the size of my thighs....Venus of Willendorf had these thighs!
Turn down that thermostat!
Ok, like, fifty is the new 30.
I'll have a double chai latte with low fat soy, grande.
What was I just saying?

OK, these are the obvious ones - can you find something more original?

musemother
ps Hey, we should make a video, if we only knew how to work that computer...

Musemother Newsletter for January

2012-01-07T10:12:00.001-05:00

Did you know you can subscribe to a free monthly newsletter from Musemother?

This month's theme is Self-Compassion. Here's a brief excerpt:

"There are many things I could consider working on in the newyear, that is if I believed in making resolutions. But the best advice I`vereceived lately suggested putting off New Year`s until February 1^stbecause most of us are still overextended and over-tired from the holidaymarathon of parties, gifts, hostessing and traveling.

However, if I did make a list, self-compassion might be atthe top of it. Partly because, the first thing my mind started doing on myfirst day back from holidays was start in on me about how the house is a mess, start putting decorations away, take down the tree, etc. Ihave a really hard time giving myself permission to rest and enjoy somecreative loafing time. For a writer, that`s a really big challenge - to take time off from house stuff to do thecreative stuff.

So I picked up a small book I got in myChristmas stocking, How to beCompassionate, by the Dalai Lama. ..."

If you are interested in receiving monthly wisdom about self-care and the women's journey through mid-life, head over to my website, www.jenniferboire.com and click on Contact to sign up for this free newsletter.

By the way, I'm on Facebook as well, and although the blog doesn't automatically transfer over to my Notes page anymore, I often re-post or share a link so you can read it there.

Have a dreamy snowy day, and take good care of your heart,
jenn/musemother

Welcome to 2012

2012-01-03T14:34:00.002-05:00

Ok, you've received them too, a slew of Happy New Year pictures and copies of articles on Resolutions or Non-resolutions...getting a wee bit tired of hearing how it's all going to change in this new year. First off, I just got back from five days away, so naturally, the first thing on my list is laundry.

Actually, the first thing on my list today was Clearing Space, and decluttering, which includes emptying suitcases and washing clothes, but more importantly, clearing the mental space I need to begin my day.

Lucky me, I got to sleep in, unlike J who had to leave for work at 7:00 a.m. But instead of waking up to a cranky day of dust and decay, I decided to dust off the soul space. Listening to a CD with Ram chant helped heal my scattered cells and bring center back into focus. I knelt on the floor and placed the crown of my head on the rug at the end of my yoga stretches, surrendered to peace. Ah, breath fills my lungs and muscles feel more serene, less antsy. Feel the well fill up again after busy dizzy streets of NY, colourful restaurants and French cooking, crazy fun in the city with our kids and friends. Back to ice on the lake, sun sparkling on frozen space out my window and sweet silence filling the air around my eardrums.

This is how my New Year begins. Usher in the tranquility, release sadness, cranky moods and overwhelm.
Dust off the list of things to do and pick one or two things that really need my attention.

When the brain tires of firing up its 305 million circuits and synapses, it seeks its common denominator, the Anti-dote to stress and confusion, the One singular bell that rings a clear note.....ummmm, I like that. Re-balanced, I stand, two bare feet on the carpet, bent over, looking at my toes, soft chant on the stereo, a mother-lode of reverence.

Then up and on to the day: delete the 250 emails that accumulate while away, send in revisions for my book, delete delete the distractions that divide my attention.

Quiet the loud clanging of commerce and daily bickering over who has more than me - a bigger room, child, cow, wife, necklace, pot of gold, book sales, glass of wine, more facebook likes....

I am not going to plan for the future, at least not today. Today, I begin with rest and Decluttering.
amen,
jenn

2011-12-26T13:24:00.001-05:00

Sunny December, Happy Boxing day. Kick aside a few boxes, wrap a few more presents, traveling day, going to visit folks in Ottawa for our second Christmas celebration.

If you are still celebrating Christmas or feasting, take good care, drive safely, get some sleep before you hit the road....stay well. Happy Healthy and Whole, that's my wish for this coming year 2012.

In the middle of the holi-days, I found myself missing my yoga class, so I stretched out in the bathtub this morning, letting Epsom salts and hot water ease my muscles into lengthening, after a full day of standing, cooking, cleaning, running, serving my eighteen guests yesterday. It was a gloriously warm, friendly family gathering, with fun and games, good wine, an organic turkey with all the trimmings - mashed potatoes, peas, cranberry sauce (Julien takes a picture of something bubbling red and dark brown around the edges in the pot - look at this cool picture Mom, what is it? Oh no, I forgot the cranberries...very caramelized by then). Brothers-and-Sisters-in-law pitched in with Tourtiere brioche, and Christmas snacks and cookies. Nephews brought home-made mustard (grandmaman's recipe) and nieces brought Cookie Dough Mix in a jar - all layered and ready to mix and bake, wonderful gifts home-made.

Christmas Day was foggy and snowy. Like this picture of first snowfall.

We watched a movie of my nephew's wedding, saw our happy faces and tipsy dancing, pumpkins and apples as decor in late September. We opened our gifts, sang songs, and thanked our lucky stars to have such a big happy family. Those who couldn't be with us were missed - till New Year's Day. It's just the beginning of the holiday marathon....

I'm following my own advice today, and taking a wee nap....

then onwards and upwards...
Happy New Year!

jenn/musemother

WINTER SOLSTICE

2011-12-21T15:08:00.000-05:00

Just reading Wikipedia and Aurum Astrology blog from sister Sue Raven, http://aurumastrology.blogspot.com/to find out the real meaning of the solstice. Why did people around the world, even before Roman times and the Saturnalia, celebrate the sun in the middle of winter? Of course it has something to do with the longest night and the return of the light - apparently solstice comes from the Latin: sol for sun, sistere for to stand still, because from earth perspective, it appears that the sun stands still for a moment.

So I guess ancient philosophers thought, we should stand still too and honour the sun. Dec 22 at 5:30 am is the beginning of the solstice in fact. But we can start celebrating tonight.

I plan to put up the Christmas tree with my kids who have just arrived from their various Universities. We'll have their favourite meal (French onion soup) and decorate the tree with bright shiny things, and remember all the wonderful moments we spent together in 2011.

Usually people wait until the New Year to make their resolutions, but my astrologer sister suggests that the new moon following the solstice on Dec 24, would be the best time to plant seeds for the coming year.

One way to do this is to write a list in your journal or on a piece of paper of what you want to attract for the new year. What is it you would like to feel? Can you imagine in your heart, instead of activities, feelings you would like to experience, ie more joy, harmony, peace and serenity.

Write them down in the present tense, like you do for affirmations.

example: I attract loving and gentle people to me in 2012.
I experience peaceful resolutions with co-workers.
My heart is full of abundant love for those around me.
I manifest what I truly desire.

Write it down, then burn it in the fireplace or over a candle (with something fireproof underneath).
Let your wishes fly away, let them go, so they have a better chance of manifesting.

May you live consciously, with peace and joy as your heart companions in 2012.
Happy Celebrations, Kwanza, Solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah...

musemother/jenn
ps sign up for new classes or free newsletter at www.jenniferboire.com

Women's Wisdom at Fifty Gets Better

2011-12-13T10:04:00.000-05:00

New evidence from a survey done recently shows that women ages 50 - 65 feel the happiest and most fulfilled at this stage in their life (from author Dr. Christiane Northrup, in the introduction to her new Wisdom of Menopause; see her facebook page for an excerpt).

Why does this not surprise me? Somewhere in your fifties, your kids grow up and leave home for college, or if they live at home become very busy in their own lives and need their mother's less; women in our age group are mostly well-educated and have kept a foot in the world of academia or business by either working part-time or volunteering; and women in this age group finally feel empowered enough to speak up and say "Enough" when something doesn't suit them. And now they have the time to explore their own interests without feeling selfish.

We grew up in a different world, where children were meant to be seen but not heard; where often we are encouraged to not toot our own horns or be boastful. We were taught to be good girls, to serve others before ourselves, to think about waste and share, giving the best cut of meat to the person at the head of the table. Some of us were practical, and put aside our dreams to earn a living. We didn't talk back to our superiors and obeyed authority - well, ok, some of us did. I admit that although I was supposed to be a good girl, when I hit the teen years the urge to kick against the pricks (whoever I thought they were at the time: school principals, unfair parent's rules, French teachers) kinda took over.

But many of the women in my Creative Journaling classes nod their heads when I talk about the good girl upbringing, and many of them are just becoming comfortable in their forties and fifties with the idea that it's their turn to speak up, and with taking time for their own projects or for self-care. In class, we do all kinds of exercises to empower ourselves, to find our Voice, to shut up the Inner Critic, to speak our own truths. Because our women's wisdom is not whispering anymore, she's practically yelling - this is how I feel. Listen to me! It becomes imperative for women at mid-life to listen to their own intuition, to stand on their own two feet, to express how they feel, to speak their truth, to be true to themselves. And if it feels very empowering to do this in your journal, it is even more empowering to do this in a group of like-minded women.

I see the same thing in my Women's Circle: we need allies, we need to be heard, we need to believe that our voices matter, our feelings matter. And this is what loops back to the feeling happier and most fulfilled - if you can believe in yourself enough to switch career paths, or go back to school, or use your talents in a creative project - publish a book, send out some poems, take an art class, become a teacher and leader of younger women, it makes your heart Sing. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy - it makes a woman very happy when the Self is fulfilled, when her voice is heard, when she gets to do what really turns her on, without worrying that she might be taking up too much space, or not doing enough 'good deeds' for others.

So get out the drums, sing your song loud and clear. The world will be a better place when you explore what makes you truly happy - find what makes you feel fulfilled, and watch even your health and well-being improve. Women in their fifties and sixties are changing the world - Welcome to the best years of your life!

happy self-exploring
Musemother/jenn

Mid Life Creativity

2011-12-09T14:31:00.001-05:00

There's so much more to menopause and the mid-life transition than raging hormones and sleep deficit. There is a rebirth of creative energy to explore, a re-channeling of fecund fertility from making babies into making your dreams manifest in the world. What did you used to love doing when you were pre-teen? when you were a teenager? when you were in your twenties? and what have you left lying on the shelf waiting for your passionate attention to relight?

This year, my 57th year, I am exploring so many avenues - a new website, two new books, and most recently a CD recording project with my husband and some of our musical friends. Years ago, over 25 years ago, we all hung out together, meditated, wrote beautiful songs about inner peace and love, it was groovy man. Flash forward from 1982 to 2011: the same group have gone their musical ways, have each formed bands, written music or played in garage bands, sung in folk groups, accapella choruses and quartets....and here we are, after a month and a half of recording, with a brand new CD of old and new music, in English and in French.

Nothing short of miraculous, I know! Anyway, just to show that that creative energy does not die in your twenties. As my husband Jacques was saying, there is still a storehouse of songs and music to explore. It's very heartening actually to see just how much is waiting to burst out of us, if we give it the creative loafing time needed to create in.

So, get to it - explore your unfulfilled dreams. Take an art class, join a little theatre club, learn how to play the flute....take singing lessons or join a chorus! Write your memoir, dance the Brazilian salsa....there's no stopping this mid-life Creative Energy!

enjoy your holiday prep time, and check out Friends of Peace Les Amis de la paix on Facebook.

Musemother aka Jenn
www.jenniferboire.com

What a Wonderful Life, When I'm Calm

2011-12-02T11:45:00.001-05:00

Are you already frazzled and worried abut the holiday stress ramping up? Shopping, baking, cooking, planning for meals with extended family(ies), kids gift lists, driving you bananas?

Take a break and consider some of the calming remedies you can do to help feel more serene in the middle of the rushiest season of the year:

Calmingremedies and actions you can take

In hernewly updated best-selling classic, New Menopausal YearsThe Wise Woman Way, Susun Weed offers a number of approaches women can use to calm janglynerves, achieve greater overall calm, and cope on-the-spot with stressfulsituations.

For instant calm, Weed suggestsone or more of the following simple calming exercises, herbal allies, ormovements, and can give you more details on how and why they work:

Unfreezeyourself: Curl up in a fetal position (on your side with keens drawn up),breathe deeply, and hum. You may want to rock back and forth. Concentrate onwhat feelings want to emerge. Do not be surprised if grief is what you arereally feeling.

Focusyour eyes: Look at anything, steadily, with concentration, and breathe deeply.Feel a warmth in your upper abdomen; breathe; focus.

Conjurean image of safety: Imagine a huge image of safety, such as a cowrie shell, thepalm of Buddha or Christ, a giant mother’s lap, or a cloud of pink light.Surround the object of your anxiety with this image. Fear locks up movement andspeech; a clear visualization can unfreeze you.

Take anherbal calmative: Tincture of red clover is a profound relaxer and soothingcalmative. Its salicylic acid content (similar to aspirin) makes it anexcellent pain reliever, too. Motherwort is also effective. Motherwort is notsedating, but calming, leaving you ready for action, not flying off the handleor bouncing off the walls. Try 10 to 20 drops as soon as you feel your nervesstarting to fray or just before a stressful event. Repeat every five minutes ifneeded.

Try yogapostures. Yoga postures, yoga breathing, and quiet, focused meditation soothethe sympathetic nervous system instantly. Regular practice alleviates anxiety,often permanently.

N.B. Forward bends are particularly calming for the nervous system, anything with your head lower than your heart.

adapted excerpt from New Menopausal Yearsthe Wise Woman Way by Susun S. Weed.

Enjoy the holidays, it's a wonderful life. Give yourself the self-care you need to enjoy the season!

remember you are a wonderful, loving, creative person!

Musemother/jenn

ps see Musemother on facebook

Walden Zone digital free space

2011-11-22T11:49:00.001-05:00

Every morning I read the paper looking for that one tidbit that will inspire me. Today it's an article called Screen-Free spaces, on creating a digital free zone in your home, in the Globe and Mail www.globeandmail.com Life section. Imagine setting aside a room in your home where there is no TV, no blackberry, no computer, no Ipad, no Iphone. They call it the Walden zone.

"What if "Walden zone" became a sort of shorthand for families to remind themselves to live 'deliberately' a la Thoreau, when the kids are zoning out in front of their third hour of video games and parents are glued to their BlackBerry's?" The idea comes from a book by William Powers, Hamlet's BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age.

While you may not have a separate space in your home to meditate or do yoga in, consider that what we really need is a quiet zone, or space where we have the right to download only our reflective thoughts of the moment, or a calm space to look out the window and see blue sky. I'm lucky to have the sun rising in the east over the lake out my kitchen window, and that becomes a privileged moment. I also have a room with only bookshelves and a piano, where I can escape from the TV or music in the other room and just read.

Building a Walden moment or zone may be more about your frame of mind than building a room in your home, for instance, removing my laptop from my bedroom has also allowed a different energy in my sleeping space. It's no longer my daily work space, since I brought the laptop down to the kitchen counter. It's been a week now, and I'm still automatically looking towards the place where it used to be to check my emails.

How can you create a little more awareness, a little more quiet - or even an Internet Sabbath day? If you can't even walk the dog without checking emails and phone messages, perhaps you need to unplug for a few hours just to restore the habit of enjoying nature, smiling at people passing by, interacting with clouds in the sky.

Our kids need us to model a balanced lifestyle if they are ever going to create one for themselves. We need to find that quiet space within us, too. Enjoy a digital free zone today!

Musemother/jenn

Speaking My Truth

2011-11-15T16:29:00.001-05:00

One of my favourite things is to collect inspiring quotes and post them on Musemother facebook page. It's something innate in me I guess, the need to share immediately what I find, especially if its a resource or article or quote that has helped me and could help someone else find clarity or understanding.

The one I picked a few days ago was about integrity:
Living with integrity means: not settling for less than what you know you deserve in relationships, asking for what you want and need from others. Speaking your truth, even though it might lead to conflict or tension... Barbara de Angelis.

It's a theme that is popping up in my life in different places, in not always comfortable ways. Speaking my truth, even though it might cause conflict - is not my strong point. Or else, I speak my truth but in a strong bossy voice that precludes any acceptance or trust from the another party. Or I leave the room, slam a door, withdraw and retreat. How can I ask for what I need, and make choices based on what I believe, and still keep in harmonious relationship with others? Can I live with someone close to me not agreeing with my choices? It's time to put that baby to bed - you can't please everyone around you by being plasticene bendy.

Really, the ego self just wants the world to go exactly my way, the way I want it. I would love to control the universe, but that's just a fantasy. My kids are very good at deflating that balloon. They don't want to be controlled, they want respect and trust, and even sometimes to talk about how they feel. They tell me flat out when I'm too bossy. And I need to really listen to what they are telling me.

So Living with integrity could also be about listening, really hearing what my significant others are saying to me, really standing in my own heart space and hearing them, even if I disagree. Sometimes not speaking up would honour my integrity more. Making choices about when and where to speak, when to hold council, when to hold the silence. Allow people to come onto my island and not meet them with walls, arrows and all my defenses. Give them the benefit of the doubt, and still know what I know to be true.

I pulled a card today to help guide me in my discussions with a friend, and it was an angel card about the Heart Chakra, or heart energy. About coming from a place of love, really hearing what the other party says. My inner child is challenged by authority, by strong voices, by disagreements. But I want to soothe her enough that she will stick around, stay open, not run away at the first sign of tension or conflict. Breathing into my own heart, standing by my heart with a firm intention to stay grounded. Stay true to me, and true to the moment. I cannot give up on myself, I cannot withdraw and retreat anymore. I felt vulnerable and shakey but I breathed through it, and I tried to listen.

I want to learn more about integrity and speaking my truth, that's all I can say right now. Bottling things up and letting them explode in unexpected ways and places, is not a healthy option.

nameste,

jenn/musemother

Reimagining Life without Fear

2011-11-07T09:21:00.000-05:00

Life is benevolent. It wants to give us our hearts' desires. We don't have to wrestle what we want from a resistant life. (WOWAffirmations, Patricia Lynn Reilly. www.imagineAwoman.com)

You discover there is nothing to be afraid of. If you walked through the world with this feeling, what would you do or be differently?

(Life's companion, Journal Writing as a Spiritual Practice, Christina Baldwin) http://www.peerspirit.com/

The above quotes coincided to bless my life experience this past week. It started with a dream I had the day after a Rolfing session (more on Rolfing later, but it's a kind of body talk experience, a gentle touch that releases fascia and emotional baggage trapped there).

First, the dream: I am sitting in my backyard with my husband. I look up and there is a huge wall of grey shimmering water, taller than a high-rise, coming towards me. I turn to climb the chain link fence behind me, and can't lift myself up. I have no strength in my muscles. My husband tries to help me, on one knee, giving me a hand up, but neither of us can move, frozen in fear.

The dream work I did in the Rolfing session surprised me - after taking turns inhabiting all parts of the dream, being the wave, being my husband, being Jennifer frozen on the fence, I discovered the wall of water was actually not harmful but benevolence itself, a huge tsunami of love wanting to enclose me in its embrace.

(photo of Kennebunkport, Maine, October 8, 2011)

So, fear of disappearing into the wave of love has frozen me. Revisiting the dream, I felt the fear melting and the heart open in gratefulness.

This week in journal class, we wrote using the quote from Life's companion as a prompt. If I discovered there was nothing to be afraid of, how would I live my life differently? If life really is benevolent and wants me to realize my heart's desires (instead of living in struggle, fear, poverty mode), then perhaps I can begin to move through life in a more relaxed and open way... It changes everything to start imagining this is true.

It works against my background of tightness and fear, always tense and expecting the worst, afraid that beauty and love are "too good to be true". It works against my expectation of what I deserve. It invites me to feel accepting and worthy of my highest good. It nudges me out of my frozen on the fence mode, unable to take steps, take risks, move forward, and invites me to feel the deep embrace of the higher love inside me.

The strangest thing is how it manifests in the outer world. Once I open my heart and melt the resistance to love, all of a sudden I receive more love. It's embarrassing to receive that much love. For instance, this year I received more birthday wishes on Facebook that I have ever had, not to mention emails and phone calls wishing me happy birthday. My open, vulnerable self, that I call Baby Jennifer, revels in this love and the ego shivers and quakes like a small dog in a thunderstorm.

To accept this reality helps me take steps in publishing my next book, The Tao of Turning Fifty. It helps me be less shy to meet the people who can help me manifest my desire to reach as many women as possible with the resources and knowledge I want to share. It helps unfreeze me from not wanting to 'sell' myself or appear too pushy. My good girl self would like to hang back and let people come to me. But if they don't hear about the work I'm doing, how does that serve the purpose?

Anyway, I am working with this new awareness. I will breathe myself into it, in my body. I continue to explore the margins of fear, the echoes of love, feeling the shimmering possibility of moving forward in trust and love, knowing that Life is benevolent. It wants my well-being. We have a partnership going on here, and I can learn to trust that, bow to that, surrender to love instead of to fear.

have a great day/week,

namaste,

jenn/musemother

Poems for middle age

2011-10-31T14:13:00.000-04:00

Woman in Fog

If only she could, she would give her

heart to her husband, womb to her daughter,

arms to her son. But her body lies on the floor

awaiting rejuvenation, still breathing, broken.

What to do on the days when tears drop

into her soup? It’s ok to do nothing, shethinks,

just simple tasks like laundry.

She picks up a book of poems instead, reads

“treeslose parts of themselves inside

a circle of fog” *

She’s in a thick fog, has shed her leaves,

absorbedmoisture till she has water on the

brain, disoriented by the shift that wakes

her at night, puts other parts of her to sleep,

brought to her knees in a wave of heat and

tears, unable to exchange the chief’s hat

for the sombrero.

Her feet feel heavy, her mind dull.

She tells herself, it is only temporary,

lie fallow, compost.

Oh the music she needs to comfort her,

and the long night she’ll travel through

until the bright dawn reclaims her.

Human, faulty, imperfect,

like the low thrum she hears in Cohen’s voice.

Claiming darkness as its source

it rings true, full of light.

*(Excerpted line from poem by Francis Ponge)

as published in For the Birds, Little Red Bird Press,
2011

Musemother Newsletter

2011-10-28T09:01:00.000-04:00

I have a new website at www.jenniferboire.com where you can sign up for the Free monthly newsletter, inspiration for your woman's soul.

November newsletter coming out early next week.

Developing Intuition

2011-10-25T12:14:00.005-04:00

Intuition is my favourite topic. So I was very pleased to read a fascinating article The Truth about Intuition in the latest Whole Living www.wholeliving.com magazine. Author Dana White quotes psychologist David G. Myers, author of Intuition: Its power and Perils, in talking about the ancient biological wisdom that intuition is based on. Apparently, early human beings needed to quickly assess if a stranger was friend or enemy. Almost like animal instinct, this wisdom grew in us. As our brain evolved, the prefrontal cortex, which is the seat of conscious thought, grew too. But sometimes, when it short-circuits due to stress, the brain switches back to primal mode, bypassing the conscious mind and operating on an instinctive, unconscious level. We make a snap decision in a second, throw that spear, and it gets the mastadon between the eyes.

Sometimes intuition comes as a nudge from within, even a physical sensation, a 'gut feel' or a skin tingling creepy feeling of danger. Some people seem better than others at letting their subconscious mind guide them, by honing their instincts. The author mentions people who detect roadside bombs as being good at this.

People can be trained to awaken their intuitive abilities, and it doesn't have to be necessarily linked to anything spooky or psychic powers. I think of it as friendly guidance, and the more I listen to it and act on its advice, the stronger the relationship between me and my inner voice grows.

In my experience, journal writing has been a very important tool in awakening intuition or inner guidance (IGS, inner guidance system, I like to call it). It's like a higher satellite intelligence that sees all and knows all and I have a direct connection to it within. Meditation helps me settle and be still enough to hear it. Yoga also brings me into body awareness and subtle thought, underneath the mind's busy chatter. Whatever helps bring you into a receptive space, walking in wild nature, watching the sky and clouds, or contemplating the silence in a temple, allows the inner voice to speak up.

Perhaps it takes a little bit of faith in the beginning. But with practice, you can begin to notice when your intuition guides you in the right direction, and the times you didn't listen when you should have. For things as simple as whether to bring an umbrella or a pair of sunglasses, or whether to take a detour or stay on the straight and narrow, and for larger questions as to which direction to take on the path of life, your inner guidance is trustworthy.

Writing in your journal, open up a dialogue with your IGS, or inner voice. Address it, write to it, ask the questions that are bugging you. Let it inform your daily life. Develop this relationship with your own inner knowing. It will help you relax, and learn to trust the larger picture. It will reassure you that wherever you are, there is something to be learned. You are ok, everything is all right. Or if things are not alright, it will help you bust on out of there in a hurry.

Give yourself a few minutes of quiet time today, maybe over lunch, and just see what pops up.

namaste,
musemother/jenn

Depression and Mid-Life

2011-10-19T08:43:00.004-04:00

Women are twice as likely as men to develop depression, says an article in the Globe & Mail this morning, and this leads to serious risk of dementia further down the line.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/new-health/health-news/depression-ups-womens-risk-of-dementia/article2205469/

What interests me in this article is the link they make between the caregiver role that women provide so often and depression: “Dr Khatri said women, especially those in mid-life, may bemore prone to depression than their male counterparts because of the stressesand strains of juggling multiple roles in life, including working and acting asthe primary family caregiver.”

No one ever said it was easy going through mid-life, butmore and more often I hear stories of women juggling teens, and elderly parentcare, on top of a full time job. This is more than multi-tasking, it canbe debilitating.

The women in a family are much more likely to take care ofelderly parents: drop by for a quick visit, drive them to their medicalappointments, listen to them talk on the phone, take time off from work to doall these things. Add that to the emotional rollercoaster of menopause andhormonal disruption, lack of sleep and night sweats, and you have a woman ingreat need of time-out and self-care.

How to find the time is the question most women askthemselves. My feeling is that we don't ask for help often enough. It maybe in our nature, or we were brought up to be independent and learned early onto just buck up, Soldier On, keep on keeping on. This attitude leads toburn-out and at best, extreme fatigue. Before you have a break down, take abreak, ask for help, share the load.

You may find it counter intuitive, but I suggest you maketime, and take the time for yourself. Whether it's a mini-retreat inyour home where you unplug the phone for one hour and write in your journal, ora trip to the spa for a pedicure, treat yourself with tender loving care.

"Your life is a sacred journey. And it is about change,growth, discovery movement, transformation, continuously expanding your visionof what is possible, stretching your soul, learning to see clearly and deeply,listening to your intuition, taking courageous challenges at every step alongthe way." Caroline Adams from the Labryrinth website, www.lessons4living.com/labryrinth

Remember that your life is sacred. Remember that to love oneanother as yourself, we must also love ourselves.

namaste,

musemother/jenn

Mid-life emotions

2011-10-04T15:34:00.004-04:00

Even at the best of times, I have always been an emotional creature (thank you Eve Ensler for recognizing that and writing about it). Girls and women, we have moods. We have hormones. We have ebbs and flows like the moon, tides and cycles. We go up, we go down.

When I was in University, I decided one day to try and chart the way my mood went. What I found out surprised me. If I started the day happy, in a good mood and upbeat, by the end of the day I was usually feeling the opposite. If I started out blue or down, by the end of the day I was feeling more upbeat. Later, when I was trying to get pregnant in my thirties, I was charting my temperature, not my mood. Every morning, the basal thermometer tracked the heat in my body, whether ovulation was happening or not, whether we could conceivably conceive. Hormones and emotions, highs and lows.

Pregnancy and giving birth - well, even more extreme emotions and moods, highs and lows. I was mostly happy and healthy while pregnant (after I got over two miscarriages). My body loved those hormones.

By the time I hit perimenopause, or at least by the time any symptoms started showing I was forty-nine, and my kids were hitting puberty. Ever heard of the hot flash clash? That's when both you and your daughter are cycling at the same time, with PMS and extra flashes of emotional energy hitting each other and bouncing off the walls. She wrote me a card once that said, I love you mommy, in spite of your mood swings!

For some reason, probably my upbringing and the family I was born into, expressing emotion is not easy for me. When I am hormonal I burst into tears easily, but other than that, nada. It used to hit me by surprise a day or two before my period would begin - I'd cry for no apparent reason, then realize two days later, ah yes, the precursor to the period is the crankiness or the teariness.

What is it about emotion that scares us so? We're trained to keep a stiff upper lip, to answer "fine" no matter how we're feeling. Only our nearest and dearest see how we are really doing, and then sometimes they feel the brunt of our excess stress and worry. At mid-life, the emotional rollercoaster was my biggest symptom of the 'Change'. I didn't get so many hot flashes, but angry outbursts and weepy moments were legion. Some of the time I was in a slough of despair - not so bad that I couldn't get out of bed in the morning, but there was lethargy and lack of motivation galore. Swampy terrain, upside down feelings. Not sure of anything except the need for rest, the need to withdraw, the need for lots of down time repairing the overwhelmed brain and emotions. Tuck me in at night, would ya? I'd be in bed at 8:30 pm.

If this is anything like your journey through mid-life, know that the healing is in the feeling. I got lots of help - from a family counsellor for anger issues, from a homeopath, naturopath and Reiki therapist for overwhelm and stress. From an osteopath for shoulder pain. I discovered a gluten intolerance and cutting out wheat improved my mood and fatigue considerably. I began taking iodine for a low functioning thyroid. I'm still working on some health and shoulder issues, but my emotions appear to be more stabilized. More joy is creeping back in, more laughter, more enjoyment and relaxation, less angst. Kids are growing, leaving the nest too.

I highly recommend journal writing as well as talking with your women friends, if you're feeling the pressure. Find out what you need more of, what you want less of. Give yourself permission to rest, take a nap. Pay attention to the signposts on the journey - to your emotional barometers. Keep optimistic and hopeful, it's temporary. Above all, listen to your intuition, and let yourself feel what you feel.

namaste,
jenn/musemother

Wild Soul of Nature

2011-09-20T17:22:00.001-04:00

I've been reading Women Who Run With the Wolves, and so maybe that was why I dreamed of foxes. In the dream I was at the Ecomuseum or looking out a window of a building onto a field. A red blur of foxes ran over a hill, and I caught a glimpse of fluffy red tails and their distinctive coats. I turned to someone and said, I didn't know that foxes lived and ran together in a clan like wolves do: tribe, group...pack, that's it!

On the same day, early in the morning I noticed my dog sniffing the grass on the front lawn and wandered over to see what she was smelling - a rather big dead animal. At first I thought it was a rabbit, but after getting the shovel and turning it over, I noticed the long whitish snout, sharp teeth and ugly bent claws, roundish tail. An opossum! It seemed unlikely this far north, but a quick search on the internet for images showed me it was beyond a doubt a dead possum.

Two wild animals creeping into my zone, one in dream, one on my lawn. What could it mean? The value of a little wildness in my conventional, tidy life... I ponder the question, why does the word 'wild' thrill me, especially in the sense of the inner wild woman that Clarissa Pinkola Estes talks about in her book. I lead a fairly suburban life - neither in the woods, nor fully in the city. Our house is near water, and that brings closeness to wild geese and ducks, but besides that it's the skunks and raccoons and squirrels, crows and sparrows that keep us company.

-----But the wildness I think I'm missing is that connection to the instinctual, the healthy body instincts and feelings that get smothered by too much 'civilizing,' too much worried parenting, too many strictures, too much rigidity and restriction of freedom. We're told when we're little to quiet down, to not bother our mother when she's busy (on the phone, stirring a pot, reading the newspaper, trying to have a quiet moment!), to let Daddy snooze in his chair; we're kept in straight lines in desks with our hands on top of them, on good behaviour at school, we line up after recess, we don't let the cruel words of boys and girls hurt us, 'sticks and stones will break my bones'....we hold things in tight, inside.

Where is the wild nature of the pre-school child, the spontaneous feeling that fills our spirit and calls to our soul - the way the body could move with the soul if it didn't feel so tight! I'm missing that wildness, that get up and go-ness, that freedom to move. Last week I began working with a Rolfer (body worker), and I have already found a small measure of joy creeping back into my body, freeing up some old tightness.

How can you let your wild nature soar today, just a little? Maybe a little jig on the grass? A moment alone with the crows? Can we be strong enough to listen to what our bodies whisper in our ears, our instinct and intuition? Estes suggests we not treat our bodies as a dumb beast of burden carrying our weight in the world, but as a rocket launcher! A place, a window that the soul looks out of. Let us let the wild animal of our body love what it needs to love....

jenn/musemother

Facing the Page: Writing through fear

2011-09-12T12:02:00.000-04:00

“There is vitality,a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you intoaction, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expressionis unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other mediumand it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business todetermine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with otherexpressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keepthe channel open.” MarthaGraham, as quoted by Agnes DeMille, Martha: The Life and work of Martha Graham

We all haveblocking beliefs, whether its I’m not good enough, or I don’t have time, or I’m notcreative. When I listen to all the reasons I can’t write, or the fears that assail me when it gets torewriting, I paralyze, feel frozen. So many good projects are waiting on theback burner for me to make a commitment to them, to decide I amworthy of taking this creative time. This morning I decided I needed a ritualto let my muse know that I am going to take this time and finally face the blocks that may be unconsciously holding me backfrom working on my stories.

What I love about the Martha Graham quote is that she givesme permission to just do it! To not wait for the perfect moment or the perfect mentor to encourage me. Idon’t have to worry about how good my writing is, or the value of my stories. But I dohave to take the time and keep the channel open. Just acknowledging thisintention is very good for me. I feel my desire is growing to love myselfenough to write those stories of a rebellious young girl feeling her way through love, sex, relationships with guys, experimenting withdanger, pushing the edges of her boundaries to find her own truth, living in an house with alcoholic parents where unpredictability was the order of the day.

Tomorrow I begin leading two Creative JournalClasses and I’m very psyched for it. I understand the fear some participantsor new writers may be feeling because I still feel it! I get to place my faithand trust in the journal writing every time I open the page. It’s not usually difficultfor me to write in the first place, but taking the raw material andtransforming it into stories is something new for me. I’ve worked with poetryfor over twenty years, and love that creative process. Now it’s time to givesome dedicated time to the stories inhabiting me.

Here’s a metaphor for facing the fear that I came up withfor my first class (excerpted version):

Imagine your desire to write is like a tow line attached toa ferry crossing a river. If you jump in the cold water you’ll beswept downstream by a very strong current, and may drown (at least, that is thefear). But if you hold onto the tow line or better yet, attach your boat to it,or drive onto a ferry that is attached to it, you will be pulled across insafety to the other side. What does the tow line represent in this scenario?Your faith and trust, taking baby steps, one at a time, in entrusting yourthoughts to your journal, beginning to tell your story.

Where we are headed is not a physical space and the fears may seem irrational. Maybe it’s adream you have of publishing a book, maybe it’s more self-awareness you want,or time for some creative play. Maybe it’s a particular project like I have, towrite my teenage adventures (they’ been sitting on my computer since I took a course online in Autobiographical writing). What do you need? You need encouragement andyou need courage: both these words have the French word for heart at the center– Coeur – so you need to get in touch with your Heart’s desire in order to find yourcourage.

How do you imagine yourself getting across the wide gulf? Theonly way I know is by writing from the heart, surrounding yourself with heart-centered,positive people; perseverance and discipline are needed, yes, but from theinside, not the outside. If you don’t have a fierce desire to write yet, that’sok. Let it be vague and foggy, and just know that if you attach yourself to thetow line, the rope can be your journal, your connection with the inner guide, your trust in the Voice. Your desire to get to write and know yourself better is like a muscle that hasbeen a little unused perhaps, but with practice it will get strengthened. Youwill get across and look back, wondering what you were so afraid of, becauseyou find you do have the power to write, the strength, the courage has come. This is how I felt watching my website golive the first week of September and two new book projects begin to come closer toreality.

The journey of your life is afoot, the journey to journalingalso. Here you are, on the boat taking your first steps to face your fears –bravo! Give yourself a pat on the back for showing up, for registering for a class,for taking baby steps that can turn into giant steps. Let it continue likethis, venturing into unknown territory. We’ll break it down into doable tasks. With five minute writing, tenminute writing, small questions to get you started, deep questions that maychallenge you or inspire you. We will always begin with centering, to groundourselves in the body, in the here and now. We’ll jump through the hoop or thering of fire by focusing on the hoop, not the fire.

Writing is a beautiful gift humans have been given. Don't let the fear stop you from discovering it.

Namaste,

Jenn/Musemother

www.jenniferboire.com

Tango at mid-life: creativity

2011-09-07T09:23:00.001-04:00

collage

I met an old friend at a Labour Day brunch, and she was telling me about losing her job in a month or two, part of the company's downsizing. I knew she worked in accounting, but I wondered what her real passions were. She told me that years ago she used to dance, doing ballet and ballet jazz, her creative passion. At age 55, she didn’t think she could go back to dancing, but might look into evening classes. She’s a mother of three, now grandmother of two little ones, and had stayed home with her kids when they were younger. She sort of fell into accounting as a job because she knew how to do it, and it paid the bills. Raising three kids left her little time to explore her own passions.

When I asked her about her creative side, her face lit up, and I could see she had a longing to explore dance again. I told her about an exercise I do in my Creative Journaling classes, called What do I love. One of the questions is, what did you used to do for fun that you don’t do anymore. The first thing that popped into my mind when I answered this question was biking. As a teenager, and even later as a married woman without kids, I used to ride my bike all over the place. I loved the sense of freedom, the wind blowing in my hair, the ability to go far and faster than walking, the parks I discovered, even the cemetery where I would bring my journal and write amongst the quiet trees and gorgeous landscaped plots.

Lise said biking was something she loves too and she was thinking of getting the bike out again. My husband just helped me over the weekend, pull the bike out of storage and pump the tires. It’s funny how when we get busy with families and work, we let these things go sometimes. Then, the kids grow up and leave home, and we begin to find time at mid-life for doing things we love again. Often, from my conversations with women, it’s the creative pursuits like drawing, water colour, dance or writing, that come to the fore. Or things we like to do just for fun, for no practical reason at all, like biking or sword fighting or swimming competitively like two of my friends in their fifties who spent their whole vacation in the pool perfecting their strokes.

What have you rediscovered that you love to do? Have you been brave and registered for something new? Have you ever considered journal writing as a pastime? The following are some quotes on creativity that I’ve been collecting, to inspire me when I’m down in the dumps and forget how taking baby steps towards being creative fulfills my soul.

“The heart of all creativity is the awakening and flowering of individuality. The mystery and magic of being an individual is to live life in response to the deep call within, the call to become who we were dreamed to be...the divine blueprint of the soul. This is where true freedom awaits us. Freedom is the poise of the soul at one with life which honours and engages its creative possibility.” Beauty, John O’Donohue

“There is vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.” Martha Graham, quoted by Agnes DeMille, in Martha: The Life and work of Martha Graham

“A woman must be careful to not allow over responsibility (or over-respectability) to steal her necessary creative rests, riffs and raptures. She simply must put her foot down and say no to half of what she believes she ‘should’ be doing. Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only. “ Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women who run with the wolves, chapter “Clear Water, Nourishing the Creative life”

"Once you become aware of what stands in your way and become willing to release it, you signal the universe that you are ready to manifest the life you were meant to live. Chérie Carter-Scott

Are you ready to manifest the blueprint for a creative life?

Let the universe know,

Musemother

Mid Life Moods: Journaling dark thoughts

2011-08-31T16:56:00.001-04:00

Mid-life Moods and dark thoughts

If we reject what is painful, we find only more pain,
but if we embrace what is within us, we stumble upon the light.
~ Elizabeth Lesser

“Aren’t you a dog anyway, always groveling for love and begging to be petted? You ought to get into the garbage and lick the insides of the can, the greasy wrappers, the picked-over bones, you ought to drive your snout into the coffee grounds. Ah, coffee! Why not gulp some down with four cigarettes and then blast naked into the streets, and leap on the first beautiful man you find? The words ruin me, haven’t they been jailed in your throat for forty years, isn’t it time you set them loose in slutty dresses and torn fishnets to totter around in five-inch heels and slutty mascara? Sure it’s time. You’ve rolled over long enough… at the end of all this there’s one lousy biscuit, and it tastes like dirt. So get going. Listen: they’re howling for you now.” tell me the power of words, blog, Meredithwinn.wordpress.com

Naming things, naming our sadness, our joy, our despair and confusion makes it more real and also helps us move beyond it. I shivered when I read the piece from Meredith above. It made me want to get out my journal and write about the gritty underbelly of feelings that I keep hidden.

It brings me clarity to name what I feel, even if I’m uncomfortable admitting to those feelings. Sometimes I don’t even know how I feel until I get to the bottom of the page and look back. Ah, that’s what it was. On the outside everything may look hunky-dory, but on the journey to the self, on my inner journey, it might be a good deal rockier. And always, beyond the chattering of monkey mind, behind the breath, there is a vital core energy breathing me.

I woke up this morning, two days after Hurricane Irene blew through New York and the northeast, and felt the spaces in my body where there was pain and absence, disappointment with myself, tension and stress, unhappiness, leftover rigidity from yesterday’s shopping trip with my daughter. We are often happy together, but if there is uncertainty, difficulty or tension about details, we are both very unhappy. I was left with the feeling in my body – that I am not always a good mother, that I hate being ‘in charge’ even if I like being in control. I am supposed to be the elder, wiser one, helping her settle into her first week of a new city, new university residence, negotiating new rules, new spaces, new contacts. But I’m navigating new territory too, beginning my own new ventures, a new website, new creative journaling classes for women, new book of poems, new non-fiction book for women in mid-life (The Tao of Turning Fifty). A lot of new’s for both of us.

Finally I went out to the health food store and bought a product called Calm, a fizzy drink with magnesium in powder form. Lovely, I thought, I need this right now. I want to be calm. I want to find that great comfy place where everything goes swimmingly well even in the unknown territories that freak me out, like filling out forms on-line to get an ISBN number. Should be simple, but what if I screw it up? Shoulders hunch up, I breathe, and try not to rush, and voila! Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Relax shoulders.

So journaling, writing, naming the blues. I always try to be uplifting and be a friend, hand holding and breathing light into the darkness. That’s ok. But there have been many, many times, especially during the last ten years on the peri-menopausal journey, where I have not felt so sure of myself, nor centered and right. I have reached out to my sisters for help, learned EFT, done workshops, felt lots of healing moments in Retreat, and gently gently am learning to go easy on myself.

So, the gist of it is, name the little bugger that’s got you by the pants, gremlin or cranky critic or depression, despair, or fear. Hold somebody’s hand if you need to. Buy some dark chocolate and spiced tea, play some soothing music and rock yourself through it – then write it. Write about what you’re afraid to feel, to acknowledge or admit, to risk. Write as a spiritual practice to help you go deeper into the ‘why’ of what you love, and what you hate, your struggles with overwhelm and your lack of understanding. Write your way to clarity.

Your journal is a safe place to confide in, to hang out naked in, to be private and converse with angels in. To be in your body, at home with your feelings, to gradually grow in self-acceptance and love and let go of judgement and painful self-sabotage – that is beautiful.

So, I’m sure the dark corners are like boogeymen. Once you shine a light on them, once you begin to name them, they shrink and disappear.

Nameste,

Jenn

Ps what are you afraid to write about? Begin there.

Being Calm and Gentle with Myself

2011-08-22T12:06:00.000-04:00

Last June I was seeing a naturopath who heals with Chinese herbs and energy treatments. She told me my adrenal glands were depleted, and made me realize how stressed my body is, all that coritsol rushing through, all those muscular tightness issues and clenching in the jaw and shoulders – from years of working on the computer yes, but also from hunching up in fight or flight mode. Anxiety, stress, constant stimuli, parenting, work deadlines....it all adds to the body being winched up tight.

So today, I am breathing into those muscles and allowing myself to relax. I take a deep breath and tell myself, I am ok, everything is alright. I try to catch the worry wart in me before she takes over my day. Don’t we all need a break from this ‘being on edge’? Bad news, famine, war, and bombardment of tv, radio and newspapers doesn’t help me find my balance. I firmly believe that my being stressed and ready to take flight, jumpy at any noise, unable to relax does not help the world one iota.

So what can I do, what helps? Giving my family the gift of my serene presence. It's time to make it real, Jennifer. Make it a priority. Do whatever it takes to stay calm. I even bought a poster at the MOCA in LA that says Calm so I can have a visual reminder. I’m off to yoga now, and I’m sure it will help me find my calm center.

Ahh, back from yoga, and shivasana and wow, that did help me feel grounded and relaxed. I'm a much happier camper at home, with my kids when I kick the adrenaline habit, the stress addiction, the enjoyable "I'm so busy get out of my way" buzz.....

I wish that for you today, to know that it’s alright, everything is ok. Be well. Be calm.

Musemother

Being 50, becoming myself

2011-08-18T16:25:00.000-04:00

Interviewing a woman who turned 50 a year ago this morning, and we had a deep conversation about how much strength there is in being 50, in becoming aligned with your spiritual and creative energy, to create your life in your own image. I am exploring this in my work, how the need to reinvent ourselves sometimes hits in the 40's or 50's - one has a dissatisfaction with the way things are, the ordinary, conventional ideas of success. As if society says, if you haven't hit it by 50, well then, lay low, get out of the way for the 30 year olds up and coming. You haven't made it.

But we have so much to give! so much new found confidence and assurance, so much life experience. We're just beginning to know ourselves, with focused simplicity and passion for giving back what we've learned. Often this implies a 'virement' a complete 360 degree change. Or a sideways channel - for this woman it was turning her back on years of playing piano, teaching music, earning degrees, to go back to school to study the body and its inner workings in osteopathy. I loved the way she talked about her hands - being the instrument she uses to touch the world, in both disciplines.

Another woman who I respect as an author, turned from being a therapist to working with the menstrual cycle and teaching its inner workings to women, leading workshops, and following an inner Authority, as she called it which calls her to do this work. (http://www.womensquest.ning.com/) Myself, I was working at home, writing poetry, raising children, doing the odd reading, and teaching part-time, but not fulfilled completely by either - wanting to find that specific gift or talent or purpose to give to the world. Knowing that I need to manage my energy and not disperse it wildly in too many directions, I was seeking the one thing that was mine to give, and create something of my own.

Eventually this lead me to teaching journal writing classes and leading retreats, which so satisfies me and gives me pleasure - to dip into the juicy conversations, the deeper levels of communicating with other women, women in transition, women raising children, or working at careers, who themselves don't understand the quest they are on for meaning, but are looking for new learnings, open to discovery. Now I'm on to publishing, and getting my books out there, and all that entails, new learnings.

How have you been affected by the mid-life transition? have you felt the winds of change blowing through your life, or are you content with the way things are? Are you learning to know yourself better?

post a comment, let me know, I'm very curious how other women live this time.

musemother/jenn
ps see my new facebook page for Musemother

Hot flashes and Soy: The truth?

2011-08-11T15:29:00.001-04:00

The truth is, every time you read the news, the experts are changing their minds. First, soy was a sure thing to reduce hot flashes. Then I read in Susun Weed's The New Menopause the Wise Woman's Way www.susunweed.com that unfermented soy was not good for us. Now a clinical trial published in the Archives of Internal Medicine seems to show that soy's isoflavones do not protect against bone loss or hot flashes (a two year study of 248 postmenopausal women, G&M August 10) (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/search/?q=soy+won%27t+keep+hot+flashes&searchField=keywords&searchQuery=*%3A*) So it's hard to know what works. In the same article, the author mentions maintaining a healthy weight and getting enough exercise is good for reducing hot flashes, as well as adding flax seed and black cohosh, The only supplement I ever needed was Promensil, a red clover extract high in isoflavones. As long as I took the little pill every day I was fine, no hot flashes. One month I stopped taking it, and they came back in full force. The article suggests red clover has no effect, but my experience shows otherwise, and several of my friends have used it as well, to good effect. I think it's like the homeopaths say - each body, each person, each psyche and physical being reacts differently to the same remedy. What works for one may not work for another. You may have to try a few different things before you discover what works. Whatever you do, know that the rocky road of menopausal change is temporary. Keep yourself in good health, get lots of rest, and support from your women friends and family. There is a bright side to menopause, an increased level of confidence, a desire to speak our own truths, a clarity about what is in our best interests, a kind of reckoning with the 'good girl' self who was trained to put others first at her own expense. It becomes imperative that we listen to the signals of our body, especially the need for rest and balance. Your intuition is heightened, and you can work on building a trust in that inner connection. Take good care of yourself, and know that happier times are ahead. musemother/jenn

Am I crazy or is this just menopause?

2011-07-26T08:58:00.000-04:00

Midlife and menopause is about so much more than hormones, although that is a potent part of the mix. It’s a spiritual quest, a search for self, a psychic shift as Alexandra Pope says on Women Quest website, a deeply unnerving seismic rumble from deep underground. We feel the tremors, we want to run for solid ground, but it’s unclear how to find that. Everything we know about ourselves changes. We become highly sensitive, over-reactive, at least I did; teary eyes, enraged easily, anxious, full of butterflies and palpitations, we melt down into bug soup before our beautiful wings can grow and fly us up and out of this mess. In Ayurvedic medicine they believe the more health issues a woman has, the more trauma and illness in the body – the more stronger the symptoms of menopause, and that makes sense.

I believe all the baggage left undealt with, unopened, uncared for, swept under the rug, surges to the surface to throw us off balance. It’s a huge wake-up call for self-care. I had a lot of drams with overflowing toilets, filthy public restrooms so dirty I couldn’t go in there – and dreams of basements piled with boxes or undergoing renovations, cleared out, or storm surges flooding the house or highway, tsunamis of inner emotion flooding my consciousness in dreams. I can’t say I read all the symbols correctly, but I did feel that I needed help to stabilize my body and mind.

What helped? Lots of meditation, physiotherapy, cranio-sacral balancing, some Reiki and energy medicine, talk therapy. I have visited more health care workers in the last ten years (in lieu of going on drugs for depression, anxiety or hormones) – partly because I broke a leg, then got shoulder bursitis, and arthritis in my neck, calcifications in the shoulder – probably too much computer work catching up with me, but it did allow me to heal some of the inner issues as well. And receive some tender loving care. I have always been a striver, a people pleaser, a get things done Type A person, but since menopause I cannot multitask anymore, I can’t work long hours without regular breaks for food and sleep. I can’t burn the candle at both ends like I used to, and I nap often to rest not only my body but my overloaded brain.

Is it a product of a damaged childhood, or too much stress? – perhaps. But whether it’s karmic or genetic, it has forced me to my knees more than once, forced me out of my shell, also, to find the friendship and support of other women. I joined a women's chorus, I started my own women’s circle/group, because there was nothing out there, and now, I find myself turning around and sharing the knowledge and resources I found, that helped me. I am not an expert on anything, but I am a good researcher and reader, and began blogging to share the information that helped me. Which is a godsend actually, that I not only kept a record in my journal, but now have links to the resources. (check out the tabs on the right, and ms menopause blog)

Actually, it began with a birth journal when I was pregnant, that helped me tremendously when I was gobsmacked with emotions and hormones during that volatile time. The anger that surged when my kids were little and I felt like I was raising them alone (in spite of a supportive husband, I was the one they always seemed to call for in the middle of the night, see poem Women’s Stories on www.wisdomforwomen.blogspot.com), I was also hardwired to do it all myself without asking for help, until I broke my knee skiing and was forced to include my husband in the daily chores of child rearing. So in retrospect, being able to write it all down has had its advantage. At least I have a record of how crazy I felt (and how bad a mother I felt I was).

Now, at 56, I finally feel balanced, and ‘real’ again, maybe for the first time since having children 21 years ago. I have time for me, I do work that I love – writing, teaching, leading retreats, and the hormonal shifts finally seem to have faded away. My son is studying architecture, and right now is in Thailand learning how to meditate with Buddhist monks, and my daughter is a gorgeous, artistic, balanced 19 year old on her way to university. Now, if I can only get my shoulder issues to ‘unwind’ a lifetime of tension, I’ll be flying high. (I’m working on it, believe me).

What has helped besides journaling, and women’s circles? Yoga, meditation, Reiki, but overall, the companionship and friendship of the women close to me, friends I’ve made along with way, (thank you all!) who have shared my journey, speaking their truth, allowing themselves to be seen and heard, who make me feel a lot less alone. If you can’t find a group to belong to, create your own women’s circle, seek out the like-minded women on-line or in your community. It only takes one or two others to begin. Ask the universe for help in finding them, ask your guardian angels, write affirmations, open your heart, and do take a step to reach out in trust and faith.

And stay tuned to this blog, because I will always be writing about these kinds of issues. It makes me feel less alone to know that you are reading, and nodding your head and going, it’s not just me. I’m not the only crazy one out there.

Nameste,

Jenn/musemother
Now a chapter in the book, The Tao of Turning Fifty, What Every Woman in Her Forties Needs to Know
http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Turning-Fifty

Women in transition

2011-07-12T16:46:00.000-04:00

I just received the Kripalu fall catalogue, with workshops and classes listed - there are so many wonderful offerings for cultivating intuition, journeying to the self, awakening your feminine power, reflecting on spirituality and stress, healing emotional trauma, self healing, finding enlightenment and fulfillment, and kayaking and yoga, on top of it! (http://www.kripalu.org/)

But I didn't see anything specifically offering something for women in transition, or women in mid-life, which is where I am, and maybe some of you too.

What is this mid-life transition about? why is so fraught with emotional turmoil, ups and downs? It seems like it should be the best time of our lives - garnering more experience, more wisdom, more time for ourselves, if only we can give ourselves permission to take the time....

In my forties, my kids were hitting puberty as I was entering peri-menopause. The tug of war between their needs and roller coaster emotions and my needs and roller coast of emotions seemed to take up all the space in the house sometimes. I often felt the need to just get away, so I could calm down and find myself again. It seemed like huge waves of hormones or emotions were always sweeping me away, pulling the rug out from under me.

I did find some herbal helpers, thanks to Susun Weed's wonderful book, Menopause the Wise Women's Way, (http://www.susunweed.com/) and finding Dr. Christiane Northrup's book The Wisdom of Menopause was another lifesaver - http://www.christianenorthrup.com/. Reading that my brain was being rewired in menopause for greater intuition and inner wisdom helped me trust the changes my body and brain were going through. A few homeopathic remedies like sepia helped with feelings of overwhelm. And eventually, I got through it, I made it through the other side of fifty.

That is why I am working on this book, The Tao of Turning Fifty, to share the wisdom and resources I discovered, and to let women in transition know that they are not going crazy, that it's temporary insanity at best, and that things will be better, much better once the Change works its magic. You see, you do need to go through a transition, to become more connected to your own intuition, trust your inner knowing, and become that wise woman you always admired in other women.

Stay tuned for the book's publishing date, I'm working hard to get it out in the fall of 2011, as well as a new website which will link to this blog.

syonara
jenn/musemother

Connect with your intuition

2011-06-15T10:51:00.000-04:00

Garner your own soulful connection to the creative spirit within.

My goal is to help women cultivate faith in their own inner resources and increase their self-awarenes through journalling exercises, both visual and written.

To that end, I am developing a new website and a workbook for women in mid-life called The Tao of Turning 50.

I am making time this summer to follow my own advice and unplug from activities that no longer serve me, so I can focus on making my heart's desire manifest - to help other women understand their own mid-life journey.

Today I am looking at all the collages I've made and the vision boards, to help me make this come true. Hiring someone to design and build the website was the first concrete step I took a few weeks ago. And now I'm browsing my computer for pictures and artwork I can use for the new site. It's very exciting, a little intimidating, and completely do-able.

Connecting with my intuition and journalling about what I wanted to do with my skills and talents brought me here. Writing it down, asking the questions, turning in circles, attending workshops, doing yoga retreats, talking with the women in my circle, more questions and confusion. Finally, after what seemed a very long time, it became clear. I was not headed back to school for more classes or degrees (I did that while having 2 babies and completing my master's over 6 years). I had published one book, but had no further offers of publication for poetry - so that seemed out. I had been journalling since before I got married in 1984, so it seemed a natural first step - and less restrictive than teaching creative writing at university - to help other women express them selves and get in touch with their own intuition, desires, dreams through writing.

So here I am - taking a giant step to manifest that intuition on paper and on-line.

I hope you'll follow me on the journey. The way up and out is often by going down and in, first off.

Here we go,

jenn/musemother

The Healing H'art

2011-06-07T17:04:00.001-04:00

"Go, not knowing where; bring, not knowing what, the path is long, the way unknown, the (s)hero knows not how to arrive there by herself - Russian fairy tale To collaborate with the Unknown, the unseen, to speak with whatever Voice I hear within, to add to the gift of humanity what only you can, and build a pathway home to your deeper self. Not writing to please or satisfy but to express what I find deep within,, to go below the surface fears, the doubts that I am not good enough, the worries that others will judge it worthless

Enter into communtion with the Muse, theh source, meet the art that seeks me, in Presence. Stop thinking and let the words flow freely, even if it makes no sense, until the answer arrives. flow like the water, not ice, not fixed, but fluid. (reading Marry Your Muse, by Jan Phillips) http://www.janphillips.com/ I am on a healing journey, using my healing h'art, as the background or tool.

Offering a retreat this weekend Breathing down your bones (see Facebook page Women's Retreat) and working on the marriage of yoga and writing today with Brigitte, yoga instructor. Releasing the desire to be 'known', to be somebody. Just letting go to the calling of the heart - to be in presence, to be healed in every moment. To ask the question, and receive the healing love as answer.

It calls me to go deeper into the body, into the breath, and feel what I feel. To explore in the yoga poses, the held bones, the deeper breath, the held emotions. What is underneath?

If my body is the pen, what does it want to write?
let me know what you think about this,

musemother/jenn

Abundance and Need

2011-05-25T08:09:00.000-04:00

Wealth is not measured by how much you have, but by how little you need.

Abundance, therefore, is a state of mind. Right now, what I need is a little time and space for my inner light to shine on me. A little niche, or cleft inside, to focus on the stable, the real, the solid connection with Source.

Visiting Venice was truly an experience. One of the wonders of the world I guess. A city built on stone and brick and wood, slowly being eroded by water, surrounded by canals and lagoon, basically in a river delta that would have silted up had the engineers not tinkered with it over the centuries. Like an aging dowager with too much rouge and tatty ancient lace, Venice is tired. She still likes a good party, a glass of wine and some carpaccio. But she will not be here for much longer. Meanwhile the tourists visit in the millions every year.

It reminded me of the state of the world. Unstable, foundation being eroded by the changeable waters, an island in the sea, floating, sinking, rising according to the tides and floods.

What am I anchored to? where is my foundation? I am an island in the sea.

I have found a deep root, thanks to my teacher. A very solid link to source of peace and stability. It doesn't pay to forget it. The soul only drinks from the clear pure water of Source, and is easily tired of flashy, bright baubles, and light conversation. There is abundance within. How much do I need?

musemother

Mid Life Angst and Turbulence

2011-05-16T10:52:00.000-04:00

More than the night sweats and hot flashes, what really changed for me at menopause was my emotional landscape. I wasn't sure what the cause was, but I became hyper-sensitive. I cried easily at movies, couldn't stand to watch car crashes or bloody violence on the TV screen, I would flinch or jump at loud noises, and was generally more anxious than I remember being, especially while driving.

I would never have related this to hormone imbalance or menopause, if I hadn't read the following on the http://www.womentowomen.com website.

Here's an excerpt of the useful information I found there:

"Let’s start by looking at the root cause of anxiety — the destructive effect of stress on hormone balance.

It now seems the norm for women to be “maxed out” in all directions. Most of us work, and the workplace has gotten more demanding. Most of us raise children and help care for aging parents. We often have relationship issues that create stress too. And we are conditioned to put ourselves in last place on the list of priorities.

The type of stress is just as important as the amount. So much of the stress we experience is constant — it never goes away. The human body simply isn’t designed for constant stress. When that occurs, our ability to cope with stress can be overwhelmed. If you inventory the stress in your life you may realize that much of it is unremitting. This can give rise to a serious condition known as adrenal fatigue. It is also a cause of chronic anxiety that is often diagnosed as an anxiety disorder.

The estrogen dominance common to perimenopause probably adds to this “anxiety response.” In a normal menstrual cycle, estrogen dominates at the beginning of the cycle, and progesterone rises in the second half. The progesterone has a calming, relaxing effect. But in perimenopause we have more cycles in which we don’t ovulate, so the progesterone level stays low. (Also see our article on irregular periods.) For some women, anxiety attacks are their major symptom of perimenopause."

Add to all this the bad habits we have of jumpstarting our bodies with caffeine and eating poorly when stressed, and you have the recipe for higher levels of anxiety." www.womentowomen.org

I know many women in the same boat, with aging parents and teen-agers, full-time or part-time jobs, or sick family members that need care-taking, and very little time to care for themselves, let alone eat a healthy meal and get to bed early every night. So if you are one of those women burning the candle at both ends, don't be surprised if you feel a little raw or as if your nerves are exposed. Susun Weed, in her book The Menopausal years The Wise Woman Way says this can also come about due to our own neglect of listening in.

"You may think your feelings are out of proportion, too sharp, quite irrational, possibly insane. But, I assure you, they are only raw from neglect. Receive them without judgment, nourish them, and your 'uncontrollable' feelings during the menopausal years will lead you to the deepest heart of your own secrets.

If you cannot tolerate those about you, leave. Go to the sheltering space of your cave. Claim your Crone's Year Away." www.susunweed.com

Here's something you can do to feel better: write about your feelings in your journal, get in touch with your buried feelings (anger, grief, loss); Sing the blues or dance it out with some salsa music. Get more sunshine - not too hard in spring and summer. Move your body out into nature and take a long, healing walk. Get a massage - you'll be surprised what emotions well up sometimes while you are lying on a massage table. If tears come, let them. Find a homeopath to help you find a remedy. There are several remedies for emotional upset, overwhelm, feelings of depression or wanting to be left alone. Homeopathy was the only remedy I needed in menopause. It's inexpensive and has no side effects.

Finally, get thyself away on a retreat! - you may not be able to take a year off from your life, but you can certainly take one or two days. Find a woman's retreat by googling it, or look in your local health food store or yoga centre. I hold women's retreats once a season, so check this blog for announcements.

A new website coming in the fall, with my book, The Tao of Turning Fifty, and updates on courses and retreats.

Take good care of you!!

Nameste,
musemother

Mother's Day in Spirit

2011-05-09T10:58:00.001-04:00

Good morrow to you, all mothers, daughters of mothers, grandmothers, and grand-daughters.

yes, it was yesterday, and I was with you all in spirit. I was enjoying my Mother's Day getaway in a women's retreat in my home-birthplace of Arnrprior Ontario with Karen Ely of A Woman's Way www.awomansway.com.

What a wonderful gift to myself, plus my close friend Brigitte came along, and we got to share with each other on the journey. I stopped in to see my mother at the end of the afternoon, saw my siblings and celebrated briefly before going home to a husband-cooked supper (not a cooked husband, but a meal cooked by him :))

So, what did I receive on Mother's Day? ahh, such gifts of nature, and childhood, and remembrance of my girl child spirit playing in the woods along the Ottawa River. Memories of the moments I felt most alive, most in tune with Mother Nature, Mother Earth, and the girl who sang to the trees and flowers.

In mid-life, a woman benefits greatly from communing with her young girl self - what did you love when you were eight years old? what activities did you do then that you no longer do? can you bring some of those back into your life? the walking and skipping, the laughing at the buzzing of a bee in a flower? the singing to the fireflies?

Find that little girl energy and I guarantee you there will be more joy in your life.

happy May, month of our mother,
musemother/jenn

Mid-Life Transition

2011-05-04T09:35:00.002-04:00

Questions and more questions - where I am going? what do I love? what do I want to be when I grow up?

The mid-forties until mid-fifties is a time of questing and transition. Lots of my friends are in this age-group, and are finding themselves dealing with questions and uncertainty. Menopause is not all about the hot flashes, ladies. The greatest longing women have at mid-life is to get to know themselves, their desires, their passions, and what the heck to do with the rest of their lives now that their families are demanding less of them, or the job they've devoted their life to developing expertise in loses its appeal.

It's a weird time - I remember grieving the lack of affection and connection with my teen-agers, especially my daughter who was so closely bonded to me up to age 13. I certainly wanted them to be more independent and grown up so I could have more time for my interests, but when they showed signs of needing me less, it made me feel anxious and at a loss. Going through menopause while they went through puberty was not easy either - lots of flashing hormones and moodiness galore. It's difficult to keep calm, not follow their mood swings, in the midst of your own peaks and valleys.

Sometimes it feels like everything conspires against us - our bodies no longer feel under our control - weight gains or losses, shifts of body fat and shape, night sweats and the rest of it. Digestion changes, and food intolerances surface. It feels like work-life balance is harder to achieve - more is being asked of us, and managing our time becomes a challenge. It's difficult to even put ourselves on the agenda, get to the basic self-care and rest that we need to feel sane.

Women at mid-life often feel the need to get away, to be alone with themselves, to reflect and become more aware of their own center. Where am I in my life? What do I want to do next? are frequent questions. I find that journalling about this, and doing exercises designed to help me discover what I love, has been the greatest help. Plus talking with the women in my women's circle - having someone just listen while I speak my own truth, however confused I may seem to be, just by speaking it, I come closer to knowing what I want, who I am at the core of me.

I remember around age 48 to 51 (when I hit menopause officially) being the toughest years. I had been at home full time with my kids, volunteering at their school, trying to get published, doing readings and teaching a few classes. I was searching around to find out where next to invest my time and energy - which project was calling me. It took a few years of taking courses, going on retreats, and lots of journalling, to finally come up with an answer that felt comfortable - I didn't want to go back to school yet again (having done that in my 30's). I just wanted to find a focus that would merge my heart's desire and a way to work with my talents and skills. Teaching journal writing for women and leading retreats is what I discovered, and it has been such a pleasure - I get to explore my own interests and share them with other women. The feedback I get is that it's eye-opening and life changing, and that's gratifying for me.

My feeling is that, although it's hard to stay with the questions and uncertainty, one has to develop patience to ride it out - to just be there in the turbulent waters - trying to ground and center - but not pushing the questions away. Try to love the questions, as Rilke puts it:

“Be patient with all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke

In the questing, in the search for center, slowly slowly come the answers. Know that this is a temporary time, the transition time, The Change, helps. You will recover your sense of balance. You will come through the hormonal storm feeling more whole, more yourself. Piece by piece, bits of you will become clear - as the extraneous things that don't matter peel away, the real depths of your personality and psyche will show through. You will discover what you want, what you've always wanted. You will know yourself, and be true to yourself above all things.

Give yourself the time needed to drift a little while, to be in the hallway between two doors - one hand on the future door handle, one hand on the past - not knowing what the next step is, but trusting that the universe will unfold as it should, and above all, be gentle with yourself in the unfolding -

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Desiderata

nameste,

musemother

Grounding Myself in Self-Knowing

2011-04-25T11:32:00.001-04:00

"Can one actually find oneself in someone else? In someone else's love? ... I believe that true identiy is found as Eckhart once said, by 'by going into one's own ground and knowing oneself.'" Gift from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I am trying to discipline myself this morning, through writing in my journal after meditating, and before getting to the To Do List. To discover where my own ground is, and how best to know what I want to work on. I am trying to put my work on the front burner, on the top of the list. But it's very tempting to let the world decide for me what is important. My daughter or my son, the quartet or the chorus can all throw 'stuff' at me that needs to be done. The house is an octopus with tentacles in every room, and piles of laundry await me every Monday. I still need to put away the table and decorations from our Easter Brunch yesterday, and my son came back from residence with suitcases full of sheets and things to put away.

So I was reading some quotes from Conversations with God, by Neale Donald Walsh http://www.cwg.org/
that inspired me and I share some of them here:

"I am is the strongest creative statement. It sets in motion what you call forth.

First think about what you want to be, do, have. Think often until very clear. Think about nothing else. Discard all negative thoughts, pessimism, doubts, fears, disclipine your mind to hold fast to the original creative thought. When your thoughts are clear and steadfast, begin to speak them as truths. Say them out loud. Use the command, "I am".

I tell you this...your life proceeds out of your intentions for it."

So here goes, I'm going to take my own advice, and think long about some "I am" statements that I want to manifest. Affirmations written in "I am" form may help me get where I'm going.

I am focused on helping women give themselves permission to take care of themselves.

I am worthy and deserving of putting my full attention on writing this book, Tao of Turning Fifty.
I am reaching out to other women in mid-life to share their stories with me.
I am worthy and deserve time to pursue my own interests and have my needs met.
I am growing in self-awareness, self-knowledge, and this make the world a better place!

I am enjoying the sunshine on the lake this morning and a calm meditative mood.
enjoy the Spring Sun,
musemother/jenn

Earth Day and Easter

2011-04-23T09:34:00.001-04:00

There's a reason Earth Day is in Spring - we are giving thanks for newly green sprouts, tulips and crocuses poking their greenery above earth, snow melted, and wetness falling to provide more green leaves.

Easter, as my sister put it in her blog Aurum, is about rebirth and fertile earth. Tammuz and Adonis were middle eastern gods celebrated during spring rituals celebrating the dying and resurrecting of the seasons - they were both beloved of goddesses who represented Mother Earth - Inanna and Astarte or Ishtar, much like the Greek story of Demeter and Persephone, who lived in the underworld for 6 months of the year, creating winter. See this website for the mythological stories behnd Easter. //www.prime.org/easter.htm

The very name "Easter" is derived from Eastre, or Eostre, the Anglo-Saxon Goddess of spring and dawn. So there are many ancient pre-Christian references to this spring festival.

I also remember loving the newness of a Spring Coat and Hat (worn with little white gloves and patent leather shoes) for Easter Mass every year. Later this turned into a lace veil, when hats were no longer required at church. Easter was a magical time of chocolate bunnies, jelly beans and candy appearing on the dining room table behind closed doors, no entry until after attendance at Mass. And of course, Good Friday was a solemn walk around the stations of the cross contemplating a dying god.

Earth Day is a relatively new phenomenon, founded by US Senator Gaylord Nelson in 1970 to put the plight of the environment on the political front burner through a grass-roots movement (much like the anti-Vietnam protests which blossomed on university and college campuses). http://earthday.envirolink.org/history.html Read his story for the background on how the environmental movement got started with a concern for what humans are doing to the earth we live on.

I am grateful to both mythology, Christianity, Earth Day and grass-roots environmental protesters in the 70's for bringing attention to how we treat the abundant gifts of the earth, for the cyclical beauty of recurring seasons, for the potential for regeneration and new life out of death. For we have reason to celebrate life after a long cold winter, and to wonder at the circle of life and death and our place in the mystery.

I will spend this Easter in the company of family, celebrating two new births (great-grandchildren for my father-in-law), remembering recently deceased family members (my mother-in-law and an uncle), and eating from the bounty of Mother Earth in a Spring Feast.

How will you remember and give thanks?

Happy Easter, Joyeuses Paques
musemother/jenn

Honouring the Heart's Call

2011-04-13T10:44:00.002-04:00

excerpt from the Artist's Creed by Jan Philips, Marry Your Muse http://www.janphillips.com

I believe that the time I spend creating my art is as precious as the time I spend giving to others.

I am worth the time to create whatever I am called to create.

These messages about self-worth and creativity are very timely. While working with the Visual Journaling workbook, I chose to write about an inner conflict, and the one that came up for me was the conflict between serving and writing (whether non-fiction, stories or poems). It's very easy for me to respond to a call for help, or get involved in a project that is worthy, giving my time to others, or "othering" as I have started to call it. It's like mothering. I respond in a flash to my kid's needs, especially if they're sick or unwell. Partly for selfish reasons, I think, because it feeds my "good girl" image of myself. It makes me feel good to do good deeds. There's nothing wrong with that. However, when it becomes an obsessive-compulsive reflex, to always respond to calls from others and never make time for my own work, that is a problem.

The problem is also that my 'work' doesn't always pay. I may send out a story or poem and get paid in copies of a magazine, or get paid $50, or more if I am lucky, for a book review. I have chosen to work in the creative side, not the journalistic side of writing, and there is no immediate reward. This makes it justifiable in my sub-conscious, anyway, to put it off. The other volunteer jobs I am doing are not paying me either, to be coordinator of my chorus' management team, to be teaching writing classes at the Cancer Wellness Center, to find speakers for my women's circle, even writing this blog, but they do give back in terms of a feeling of fulfillment, or community giving.

Having been brought up enamoured of the Christian ideal of serving others first, plus living in a community environment where service was highly prioritized for most of my twenties, has made this my built in default mode. How to retrain my thinking and value my own creative work, even if I am not paid for it? Even if the book deal is far off, and the draft has been sitting on my computer for two years....waiting for me to give it my attention, waiting for me to value my own work. I've been running after workshops and retreats to try and jump start my commitment to a project outside of me, but I'm beginning to think the problem is on the inside of me.

That is why I am loving reading this book, Marry Your Muse. I recommend it to all you creatives who are torn between doing your paid job, your housework, your caretaking work, your volunteer work and your heart's passion. Consider this: you will be at peace with yourself when you respond to the voice of your own heart. We can better respond to all things from that awareness, whether it be the call to serve or the call to write.

Entering my own quiet place, in the silence, I listen and learn what is next for me, where my path is leading, and how I can be of service while remaining true to the work to which I am called.

Maybe my being creative and writing is the greatest service I am being called to perform. How will I know if I never give myself the time to find out? to practice listening.

Making time to create is like making time for prayer.....

nameste,
musemother

My imagination is a lake

2011-04-08T08:41:00.000-04:00

the lake is a mirror with ice chunks this morning
sun, gulls, a few ducks resting.
how do I receive inspiration? randomly
from the earth, air and sky
I am nature bound. Connecting to my essence
flowing with it.
I relax and access my imagination. Even
a minute staring at the lake calms my mind.

The ice melts, the water flows.
It is just the way it is. Enough warmth
in the air breaks up the frozen, gets
it moving.

Let the imagination warm up too!
let the intuition speak in a loud voice!
Receive and give, receive and give.

Heart - your true excitement comes
in creation.

Self care and Journaling

2011-04-06T16:32:00.002-04:00

We all must learn to believe that we are worthy and deserve time to pursue our own interests, to have our needs met and to enjoy lives that are rich, full and abundant in every way. Until we learn this soul lesson, we will always be in conflict as we continue to put others' needs ahead of our own.

My growing makes the world a little better for everyone....

Be the best you can be....Allow yourself time and space to Grow.

from Visual Journaling, Going Deeper than Words
(using art to get in touch with feelings and give voice to your soul, even if you can't draw).
Barbara Ganim and Susan Fox

Real Meditation is the Rhythm of this Breath

2011-04-01T13:06:00.000-04:00

Want to know what the true meditation is like? watch this clip about the Breath of Life.

Menopausal Journey and the Feminine

2011-03-28T16:35:00.000-04:00

The gift of the menopausal journey is the wisdom to know when to rest, to listen to our feminine wisdom.

Too often we align ourselves with the outer values of the work force: production, performing, success and goal-making - and these drive us forward until we hit the brick wall of exhaustion. Helen Luke, author of Woman, Earth and Spirit, The Feminine Symbol and Myth http://www.bookfinder.com/author/helen-m-luke/would say this is because we don't value the feminine values of receiving, openness, and holding space. The feminine fertilizes in the dark space where the seed lies in the earth, receiving nourishment, light and water and heat from above. It is the earth's nature to foster growth in the dark so that the seed may reach up to the light. This inner fertilizing of our soul growth is as important as the creative output phase.

The soul needs tranquility, and rest, not only fire; inner cultivation occurs in the darkness by resting, finding completeness and wholeness from within. "The way back and down to those springs [water of life] and to the roots of the tree is likewise the way on and up to the spirit of air and fire in the vaults of heaven." Luke

If we don't give ourselves time to rest and be still, to listen within, due to the pressure to perform and feel worthy, then we "scorch our inner garden with the destructive fire" according to Luke. We burn up, we burn out. We feel dry and empty.

So if you are feeling scorched, and in need of some fertilizing power, think about what elements you need to help you rest and go within.

Consider going on a retreat, or making yourself a mini-retreat for an hour, by unplugging the phone, the computer and emails and writing in your journal. Even over lunchtime, you can make a mini-retreat by walking outside in the sunshine, finding a shady tree to sit under, reflecting on the waters of life that nourish you and what they may be.

Fifty is strong. Fifty is the end of the burdens of retarded childhood, one’s own and one’s children’s. It is freedom from menstruation. It is full of power. It is being totally alive and having plenty of time to be alive. Louise Mattlage, Women and aging

jenn/musemother

Inner Peace and Adrenaline Rush

2011-03-25T15:57:00.000-04:00

Life goes by so quickly - my god - it was yesterday I bought a new printer, and today it's already 5 years old, the printer head can't be replaced because the model doesn't exist anymore. It cost me $350 to buy this Canon printer/scanner/fax and today I replaced it for $129 plus tax.

Watching people downtown on Tuesday night, St-Denis and Ontario Street, I was struck by the speed we were all moving. I was rushing, late to a poetry reading sound-check, they were rushing - Ginette Reno was doing a launch at Theatre St-Denis, we were all dressed in black or dark winter colours, and walking as quickly as we could, pushing past the slower ones.

Last night driving to a practice with my quartet just after supper time, I saw commuters still coming home from the train station, walking to their homes, everyone seemed to walk so quickly - probably hungry for their supper.

Is it just me, or have we speeded up the pace of life? I don't feel old yet, at 56 I'm certainly not one of the old fogies driving at 30 Km, but I feel allergic to all this speed and rushing. I have been used to it, even addicted to the adrenaline rush for years now. Running, rushing, pushing myself to go faster and get more done. And yes, always meditating every day, so allowing some time for slowness. But modus operandi was fast faster and fastest. I pride myself on getting back to people within the same day of receiving a request - why I have no idea.

I'm listening to a CD for my retreat: I will only go as fast as the slowest part of me is good to go....I am gentle with myself (Karen Drucker http://www.karendrucker.com) and it feels so soothing. I want to slow down the pace so I can bear it, so my body can keep up, so that my inner peace can catch up with me.

Menopause has slowed me down somewhat. The sore shoulder has slowed me down somewhat. Doing retreats and leading writing workshops brings me into the present where my enjoyment is, and more and more, I choose to move at that rhythm.

What do you think? Is slowing down an option in this hyper-fast world?

musemother

Heart Centered Healing

2011-03-16T16:57:00.000-04:00

Since October I have been living with a frozen shoulder, and seriously questioning the source of its restricted movement - was I being asked to do less, to rest more? Yes, partly. Was I being asked to relinquish my self-stated role as Overarching Boss of Everything (at least in my household)? yes, partly. Was it about surrendering to my left side, my receptive, feminine side and letting go of the yang, masculine active side? yes, partly. But today I heard another piece of the message.

A friend of mine, Lauren Young http://ascendingenergies.com/ had set up an interview with me over the phone as practice for a class he is doing at the NHC (http://www.nhcinstitute.com/). He began by asking me if I had any questions - and the only thing that really popped up for me was a question relating to the shoulder injury. He told me it was not related to doing too much, but more related to the heart energy and its expression being stuck. He suggested it was an energetic blockage, like a bunch of tangled knots in my shoulder, but coming from my heart's desire for full expression. (I first typed this as 'nots' in my shoulder....hmmm)

While listening to him, I was getting an internal message that this might also be linked to my desire to be more public, more out there in the world with my message for women, with a new book I'm writing, the retreats and workshops I lead and need to publicize better. And also about the need to protect myself, the push-pull conflict of wanting to be more available for new opportunities, and yet fearful of how much I want my private time for myself, for quiet reading, reflection and resting. It could also be about how I manifest my energy in the world - as loving energetically flowing person, or as fearful of being judged, vulnerable, unloveable person. Finally, what I learned is that the most important power I have within me is the power of my intention. What do I truly want?

This was an important new understanding for me, and I look forward to exploring it some more.

It was very helpful to have a trained, intuitive counsellor bring clarity and guidance on this issue. Thanks Lauren!

I subsequently had an energetic healing treatment with Lauren, and much of the pain was removed immediately. That night, some of it came back, as I had overused my newly freed arm in writing all afternoon. I will need a second treatment, it hasn't gone away completely. But I also learned about a book by Donna Eden called Energy Medecine and ordered her Kit on-line.http://www.innersource.net/em/

If you haven't done so already, check it out. Everyone should know how to improve their energy and move towards healing what is stuck!

nameste
musemother/jenn

Reclaim Empty Space for Yourself

2011-03-15T18:28:00.001-04:00

Self-care is not about self-indulgence, it’s about self-preservation."—Audrey Lorde

I'm preparing a retreat for March 27, and as always, the exercises that call out to me to offer are usually things that I am working on myself or are close to my heart.

It seems life is always too busy for us to take a moment for ourselves. A busy mom, with three kids, in my yoga class today was complaining of sore legs, and the instructor asked, do you ever get a chance to sit for 10 minutes in the day? No, she replied, quizzically, as if this was unheard of.

I well remember those days of small children and non-stop activity. Life with young adults who have their own lives and barely check in for meal times is quite different. But I still make myself crazy busy some days, and forget to stretch when I'm on the computer, or resist getting out for a walk in the sunshine with my dog because of the 'list of things to do'.

Here are a few suggestions for reclaiming that empty space on the agenda and filling it with Me Time (for your sanity and health, adapted from Oprah magazine).

Do one thing at a time.Don’t make the bed while brushing your teeth, check your voice mail while eating lunch or half listen to the kids while glancing at the news.

Get lost in the flow....learn a new musical instrument, write in your journal, sketch in a notebook, swim laps in a pool.

Stolen moments: take those tiny nooks of time to walk to work, eat lunch outside on a bench, make dinner without answering the phone, breathe deeply and check in with your body every hour or so, gaze out the window and daydream; The practice of doing nothing feeds your need to replenish, which is just as important as the to-do list.

Be silly. Do one fun, spontaneous thing that makes you laugh – dance alone, blast a CD during morning commute, eat a lollipop in public.

Take a half-hour walk with a friend and leave your cell phone at home. Focus on discovering something new in your surroundings you’ve never noticed.

Give yourself a day of doing nothing, to balance the days of doing too much. Rest, or engage in joyful activity - what will recharge you?

Attend a one-day retreat, Sunday, March 27, Spring Wellness Retreat, H-OM yoga studio in Hudson. $75. 10 am to 4 pm. Bring a lunch. Come recharge your batteries with creative journaling exercises and gentle yoga. www.homyogacenter.com

nameste

jenn/musemother

International Woman's Day Call Out

2011-03-08T20:15:00.002-05:00

Today I browsed several women's websites and blogs, and honestly have to say, WoW! there are a lot of seriously inspiring women who are Influencers and Leaders in the world. Here are a few: Eve Ensler, found of V-Day and writer of the Vagina Monologues (http://www.vday.org/vday_video.html), Oriah Mountain Dreamer, author of The Invitation (http://www.oriahmountaindreamer.com/), Lissa Rankin, doctor, author and founder of http://www.owningpink.com/, Joan Borysenko, author of a new book on burnout: Fried, why you burn out and how to revive (www.joanborysenko.com); Alexandra Pope, author of The Wild Genie and expert on the benefits of the menstrual cycle (http://www.wildgenie.com/) and Janet Connor, author of Writing down your Soul, one of the books that has influenced me most this past year http://www.writingdownyoursoul.com/tp40/default.asp?ID=122654 and Jennifer Louden who is re-inventing herself from the Comfort Queen to a teacher of teachers, at http://www.jenniferlouden.com/.

There are many more, but I'll stop the list here - I have a wonderful women's circle here in Beaconsfield, and I send my love and appreciation to all 10 of them, plus the 37 wonderful women in the West Island Chorus, a barbershop chorus in the Sweet Adeline's family, and the three lovely ladies in Over the Top Quartet with whom I sing. All my female friends - who know who you are - who bring me such support and love, and companionship, and are always available to raise a glass and say cheers!

To the women in my writing workshops, to the fellow yoginis in my yoga class, to my yoga instructors, to my mother and sisters, to all the women who have crossed my path and are probably on my email list....Happy Women's Day!

thanks and praise,
jenn/musemother

Exploring rest in many forms

2011-02-25T17:05:00.000-05:00

Funny thing happens when you get hurt, have a body part that aches or is not functioning...you become very aware of your body. Pain wakes you up to the fact that you are living in a human body. It has limitations, it has ecstacies. It can root me in the present moment just to listen to my breath coming and going.

This frozen shoulder, my right shoulder, my lifting, stirring, writing, moving, pushing, do everything with arm, is forcing me to slow down. I can grocery shop, but I can't lift the heavy bags. I can cook, but I need help getting out the heavy Creuset pots. It irks me to have to ask for help. But when I try and do everything I used to do my arm aches all night and I can't sleep.

I did acupunture, physio, and now I'm trying yoga nidra and soon qi-gong. The acupuncture helped, but it's still been five months now, and my chiropractor/naturopath mentioned it may take nine months before it resolves!

Last night, in my first yoga nidra class, we lay on our mats, after doing some initial leg stretches, and twists, covered ourselves with a comfy blanket and gathered pillows under our legs or heads, and spent 45 minutes listening to the yoga instructor leading us through all the parts of the body, and even some emotional mapping - what was coming up, what did we feel in our bodies. It was so deep, I think I may have fallen asleep! apparently yoga nidra has that effect.

The benefits of a 45 minute session equal 3-4 hours of sleep. It takes us into a deep alpha state, I'm guessing. Here is what Barbara Pearce sent our class about yoga nidra:

Yoga Nidra works by putting to rest the constant low grade state of alarm or fear that many or most of us live in. Through the use of the Inner Resource, the Rotation of Consciousness, breath-work, opposites, the cultivation of ananda AND Pure Being (non separative Awareness) we are invited into ever deepening states of relaxation and ease...each step helps to soothe the ancient fears that live in our deep unconscious and nervous system. Continued practice can help to bring more awareness to this primal function so that we notice when it arises and then have choice with it. Eventually the practice can open to an experience of fearlessness that comes in the recognition that no "other" exists. When everything is seen as "me", there is no threat.” ~ Anne Douglas

It's an interesting experience; I'm going back for 5 more classes. We'll see just how restful this kind of rest can be.

nameste,
Jenn/musemother

Valentine's Week

2011-02-15T09:18:00.000-05:00

Consider that February is really the middle of winter and you understand why we need a Valentine's Week, not just one day.

Hold your sweetie every night in your arms.

Love your body as you take that shower or bath, loving every light-filled cell.

Be gentle with yourself.

Be tender with your heart, like a newborn baby child.

Know that you are love, and you are loved :)

I will only go as fast as the slowest part of me feels safe to go....from a song by Karen Drucker

Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street.
I took it as a sign to start singing,
falling up into the bowl of sky.
The bowl breaks. Everywhere is falling everywhere.
Nothing else to do.
......~ Rumi

Happy Valentine's,
musemother

Inner Guidance is one breath away

2011-02-07T09:37:00.001-05:00

What I love about my Inner Guidance System is that it's so close to me.

Only a breath away.

All I have to do is sit quietly for a moment, and close my eyes, take a breath and relax into my body.

I gently breathe and let go, letting thoughts float away like clouds passing in the sky.

I let my attention come deeper down, into the belly, with my breath.

And rest there.

In this quiet place inside, I find my inner guidance or inner wisdom comes to me naturally without forcing

Answers to questions arise, I remember things I had forgotten. In this still empty place, the waters are clear and I see my peaceful reflection.

Often, I feel gratitude for just being here. I feel the simplicity, the oneness.

I feel grateful to my teacher for showing me how to go inside.

And grateful for finally turning within for guidance. Because it's so portable. It's always with me.

nameste,
jenn/musemother

Signs you're losing it

2011-01-26T16:30:00.000-05:00

Do you know the signs, the signals, the symptoms, that you're doing too much, that you're about to blow up, that you need to take a break before you break down?

Sometimes we don't listen to the soft hints, the quiet interior whispers. Sometimes we feel too guilty, too responsible, too conflicted between serving others and being selfish, so we overextend and overextend until...

we have a stroke, or we break a leg, or we get a frozen shoulder, or pneumonia, or we break a hip and need a long convalescence, a much needed rest.

We all know people - I know two in the last week - to whom this has happened. And the first thing I think is, oh yes, they were so busy, they didn't know how to slow down, now they have no choice.

We do have a choice to hear the signals and symptoms from our wise bodies and react, to take care of our selves before we get hit with an illness that forces us to take good care.

What can I do, you ask? how will I know?

One of my signals is irritability. When I am overextended, or overtired, I don't even want to pat the cat. I don't want to water the plants, and I don't want to hear someone calling "mom" from down the hall. I get on edge, cranky or panic easily at small demands. When this happens, it's a signal to me to book a massage, take some much needed 'me time', make a mini-retreat one morning, spend time alone.

Another signal might be anxiety, pit of the stomach in knots all the time, no time to relax, or tight shoulders and achey neck, clenching your teeth and sore jaw, or sleepless nights thinking over and over the same problem. Flying off the handle at your kids or your boss when they make one demand too many....(they don't know you're at your limit....). NOTICE what your body does to signal to you that something is off, something is making you tense and upset.

What to do to remedy the situation: Put yourself on the agenda - don't be part of the Superwoman Club, the Women who Do Too Much and don't know how to stop and breathe - Make the time, don't want for the time to come for self-care - Write it into your schedule.

Give Yourself Permission to rest - I can't sing the praises of naps enough - they got me through menopause, and continue to be a great source of nourishment.

If you want to hear more, I am giving a lecture on THe Power of the Pause, at the Beaconsfield Library, Tuesday February 8, 7:30 pm.

nameste
Jennifer

Power of the Pause, intro

2011-01-20T19:24:00.000-05:00

We live in a society that is obsessed with productivity and work. We have even banished the Sabbath or sacred rest day. We want material goods and professional success and we are willing to work like crazy to get it. But at what price?

Listen to the nerve-brain-Crunch of constantly being connected to twitter facebook instant messaging, texting, blackberry - crackberry..... The saying “we are all connected” is used in the Ecological movement as a metaphor for our need to take care of the planet and each other – but what we are more likely to be connected to is the super highway of Information on the internet and constant feeling of pressure, of 24/7 work and less play or down time. Increased access and speed of information coming to us increases our expectations of absolute productivity. Our response time has come down to immediate or instant, we have lost the impulse or the know-how to Pause and Rest – there is no more Sabbath, no ‘day off’ of our Instant Connection to Everything.

In the larger picture, all this 100% Connection to Information and all work no play, is the path to Burn-Out and Exhaustion. And that is what is worrisome.

Busy is the new "fine" - we are proud to be busy.

But the cost to our selves is high.

Stay tuned for more about The Power of the Pause, Lecture at Beaconsfield Library, Tuesday, February 8, 7:30 pm.
Jennifer

I will be gentle with myself

2011-01-11T16:56:00.001-05:00

here's a lovely video and song by Karen Drucker
found on youtube. I have her music on a Retreat CD put together for A Woman's Way (Karen Ely)www.awomansway.com and it is full of gems like this one. You can order it on-line at http://www.aretreatofmyown.com/

A New Year's Wish

2011-01-01T15:40:00.000-05:00

Close your eyes, make a wish.
Something true.
Something that feels good.
Something that carries you above fear.
Something that helps your heart breathe a little.
Something that makes your toes tingle and your fingers giggle.
Something small and doable.
Something you won't go back on.
Something you love to feel, always.
Something you already are, underneath.

Ok, what is it?

Write it down in the present tense as if you are already living it.

I am feeling peaceful and light in my whole being.
I lighten up and release old hurts.

Repeat it three times every morning to yourself as you look in the mirror.

My wish for you in 2011 is that you believe it will come true.

nameste
jenn/musemother

Peaceful Holidays to You

2010-12-23T10:46:00.000-05:00

In the quiet stillness of a snowy morning, in the calm before the storm of Christmas day, before the unwrapped presents litter the floor and the smell of turkey wafting from the oven, I allow myself to rest.

In the busy finished shopping days and wrapping wrapping Christmas Rap wrapping days, I allow myself to sit in stillness.

In the baking, roasting, cooking prep days of thawing and stirring and toasting nuts, I slow down and allow myself to take a breath.

What does your heart want to feel today?

What does your love of sharing the feasting and giving and drinking with family need you to do to stay open?

What do you need to really Feel like Christmas today?

Enjoy this spirit-filled time, allow yourself the gift of presence
today, tomorrow and all through the New Year.

nameste and Merry Holidays
a peaceful New Year to you

Jenn/musemother

I Love being a Girl TED talk in India

2010-12-15T18:24:00.003-05:00

This is an incredible video - please watch and be inspired!

Ten Ways To Reduce Holiday Stress

2010-12-14T13:06:00.000-05:00

It's countdown time - less than two weeks until December 25. How can you enjoy yourself during this mad rush to get all the shopping, baking, cooking, wrapping, parties etc done? Start here:

Remember, you’re only human; discover on-line shopping. Get it delivered.
Trying to be everywhere at once is impossible. Do one thing at a time.
Relax and breathe; be happy with getting less done in one day.
Enlist the elves and ask for help: don’t allow yourself to be spread too thin.
Rediscover the word "no" and say it meaningfully.
Make space for yourself on the agenda, and not just a pedicure.
Allow yourself some down time to do nothing when you need to.
How can you make “less is more” work for you?
Simplify, re-use, re-gift; scale down the celebration.
Never compare or contrast yourself with what your best friend is doing. This is your Holiday Time.

"You do not owe anyone your time. When you realize that, others will respect your time much more." – Martha Beck.

Inspired by a list found on the Flourishing Woman.com

Happy Holidays

Jenn/musemother

Sacred task of honouring Self

2010-12-10T10:09:00.001-05:00

So you may have read the blurb above about the sacred task of being a woman, honouring the feminine. But what does it mean?

If you browse this blog and the labels/titles of pieces written, you may see a theme emerging. My interest in finding out what the feminine is started years ago, before the birth of my two children (now 18 and 20). But it has been a slow unfolding to really make all the links, put it all together. I don't have any great theories about it all, but I know it has a lot to do with Slowing Down, honouring my feminine intuition, listening to the very subtle inner coach inside who whispers more than yells, and sometimes sends messages through the body, like this frozen shoulder I'm dealing with, or a broken leg (10 years ago). That broken leg really lead me on a search for understanding the mind-body connection, and a desire to listen in more honestly to my self-talk. I was stuck, immobile and had to ask for help. I spent a lot of time with myself and my journal.

Where do we start to honour the Self? The only place we always have with us, by sitting and grounding, and getting in touch with our breath, with centering, and calming the nervous flutter and the outside noise. By getting quiet, and trusting that voice that calls for Rest.

It takes a great deal of courage, and a lot of chutzpah to put yourself on the agenda. To push away all the items on your to-do list that make you feel worthy, useful, dutiful, responsible, self-less, and take time for Just You, for your creativity, for your sanity, for your inner peace, for your sense of balance.

Why wait till the body forces you to slow down, is the question. Listen to the gentle urgings to treat yourself with tenderness and compassion instead of pushing, striving, and running over your Self with steel-toed boots.

It isn't about what you do, as Jen Louden put it recently in an interview with Amy Bloom, http://www.bloomlifedesign.com/self-care-is-the-missing-ingredient/ but more about a shift in mental attitude.

Get in touch with the desire to be present, to be with yourself, to be your own best Companion. And feel a sigh of relief as you do. Come home to your Self.

Welcome home.

musemother

THE MUSE MOTHER

2010-12-06T12:27:00.002-05:00

Eavan Boland

My window pearls wet.
The bare rowan tree
berries rain.
I can see
from where I stand
a woman hunkering--
her busy hand
worrying a child's face,
working a nappy liner
over his sticky, loud
round of a mouth.
Her hand's a cloud
across his face, making light and rain,
smiles and a frown,
a smile again.
She jockeys him to her hip,
pockets the nappy liner,
collars rain on her nape
and moves away,
but my mind stays fixed:
if I could only decline her--
lost noun
out of context,
stray figure of speech--
from this rainy street
again to her roots,
she might teach me
a new language:
to he a sibyl,
able to sing the past
in pure syllables,
limning hymns sung
to belly wheat or a woman
able to speak at last
my mother tongue.

Treading Air like a Seagull

2010-12-01T15:00:00.001-05:00

You should see them r ight now - if I was handy with the camera I'd show you - they are hovering in heavy winds right at the shoreline, waiting for fish, I guess, and holding their wings steady, flapping, falling, rising, essentially in the same spot. 4 of them with white tail feathers and grey wings, playing with the wind.

What I was thinking of earlier this morning was the way the dark brooding skies and white-capped grey water were cut by a bar of light just between the tree tops and clouds. Now that light is gone, and we're moving towards more darkness.

What I was thinking of last week (and re-reading today) was the way the rain floods down the zinc roof and pools on the black earth in the empty flower beds. It overflows the gutters so that it feels like water is dripping from everywhere - the grey of the lake and the grey of the sky are depressing, if I allow it, but since the weather is unusually mild for November it isn't so bad. It's the lack of light and sunshine in winter, that gets me down.

What boosts my energy, mood and immune system - as we head into the dark season - is seeing wonderful white Christmas lights wrapped around the trees in my front yard, and along the outline of the house, transforming it into a fairy-lit land. It finally occurs to me tht we decorate this way because we need the light; it feeds us and since we're still scaredy cats most of us, even adults, and don't like the darkness in winter, we leave the lights on to comfort ourselves. Divali, Christmas, Hanukkah candles, it's all about lighting a lamp against the dark.

I am thinking of Christmas also in terms of having to prepare the house, decorate, make food - comfort food to welcome the family hordes and the brand new baby we all are looking forward to seeing, and hopefully to hold - all 28 of us. What will that be like? First Christmas also without Jacqueline, Ninine, great-grandma for the first time, who passed away this July.

In the meantime, I am treading air in time and space, like the seagulls, healing a sore shoulder, resting and napping more than usual, waiting for the creative Festive energy to brighten me up again.

To follow my own advice, I must go with the flow, even in the down times, and accept the resting is needed. The only way out and up is to go down and in.

nameste,
musemother

What do you want?

2010-11-22T17:03:00.003-05:00

"Begin doing what you want to do now, we are not living in eternity.
We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand-
and melting like a snowflake." Marie Beyon Ray

What I want

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing to be dazzled —
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing —
that the light is everything — that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

–Mary Oliver

Writing with Natalie Goldberg

2010-11-15T14:29:00.001-05:00

OK, many of you have read the book. Many of you are practitioners already. For those of you already familiar with the books, I thought I knew what timed writing was all about, having read Wild Mind and Writing down the Bones. I had even taught the exercises in my journal writing classes.

But this weekend at Kripalu, amongst 149 other participants, I learned the discipline of putting it into practise. Writing is a physical activity, as Natalie often says, and a lot of elbow grease goes into a writing workshop with these repeated 10 minute exercises. (With a frozen shoulder and irritated nerve in my writing arm, this was a challenge). Natalie would often begin by having us sit for a while in silence, or listening to a song mindfully, then throw us a topic and say Go!

The second part of this discipline was to read one of our short pieces out loud, either to the whole group (some lucky souls did this, shivering in their boots though they may have been, tearful or brave or sans breath). Or more often, in a smaller group of three or four, we read to each other. In either case, it was very powerful. No comments, not a workshop, no good or bad. Just listening. Many many healing stories were unlocked this weekend. I felt like just being there amongst these writers we were opening up a vast ear-tunnel to the Universe, with deep truths funneled up to the Compassionate Ear above (or below, or within, who knows).

Some of the prompts were from her book, Old Friend from Far Away. One of the prompts that got me really going was given on the last day, What do you really want to write about?

It sounds so obvious, but after spending all day Saturday writing, exploring the topics that lead to memory and stories and revealed some of the old weights I still carry - it became more and more clear just what my Voice wanted to say. I was given permission to write the worst crap in Massachusetts this weekend, plus I was encouraged to say what I really wanted to say, no matter what. No good, no bad, as Natalie put it so often. Just listen wholeheartedly, with your whole body. Study the mind....

I hope if you ever want to write you will look up Natalie Goldberg. Her methods are simple but very powerful. I feel like I grew a backbone this weekend, cleared a space for my truth to be told. No matter what is popular, who is listening, what is going on around me, I learned to fall in love with my particular story and the telling of it, ten minutes by ten minutes....

namaste,
jenn
ps Kripalu is offering another session with her in May.

See her website for details on her workshop schedule or book orders. (http://www.nataliegoldberg.com/index.html).

RAMPAGE of APPRECIATION

2010-11-09T09:54:00.000-05:00

Pomegranites growing on a tree, Tuscany

There is no limit to the amount of good advice we are receiving every day through emails, internet, new books out on Self-Healing and Finding more Joy.

But this line caught my eye: going on regular rampages of Appreciation.

I guess it's like Random Acts of Kindness - you don't plan it, you just let yourself loose once in a while, instead of a rant on how awful the world is, the corruption of politicans and the high divorce rate, how rude teens are, etc etc.

What would get me started?

I just love the colour yellow beaming down from a maple tree even this late in November. I love the singular loon circulating on the lake in front of my window. I so appreciate the colour red in all the circulars I get in the mailbox, and on the pomegranites in the Auberge we visited in Tuscany. The silence of the empty trees on the island, shorn of colour, standing, waiting, expecting winter. I especially enjoy entering that silence within, allowing serenity to feel the emptiness. I appreciate the breath that fills my lungs, another day. I love greeting my husband after a long day of work, when we meet in the kitchen and I call out "Daddy's home!" and the dog and cats come running. I appreciate the few times we all have supper together, now that my big girl is working and teaching dance most evenings.

What would send you on a rampage?

nameste
musemother

In Praise of pasta, passion and feeling good

2010-11-05T08:55:00.000-04:00

Flicking around in the web universe are some awesome little video clips from a man who has perfected the art of speaking about feeling, about passion, about being human.

Here is a little 7 minute clip worth watching.

nameste, have a happy November 5
Jennifer

What if a woman listened to herself?

2010-10-13T16:06:00.001-04:00

“What if a woman trusted her own tears enough to listen to them, to make real changes in her individual schedule, and to see if those changes spread to her office, her committee, her religious group? What if she trusted her anger, her irritation, her illness, even her depression, as signs that her own life was calling to her?

What if a woman allowed herself to leave a mode of doing that does not nourish her, that actively makes her unhappy? What if it were not so difficult? If her upbringing had not sought to teach her to be dutiful, moral, caring, giving, helpful, productive and loving…at all times...to all others. ….it is often finally a woman’s own pain and sadness that make her change her life. Finally, it is impossible to deny her feelings any longer.”

From Circle of Stones, Judith Duerk, Woman’s Journey to Herself

Yes, what if I listened to myself?

Get off the computer and take a walk with the dog. Give myself more creative loafing time, more timelessness, more experience of the timeless, without schedules and appointments and frantic rushing. What if I pencilled in come creative loafing time on my agenda? what if I made an artist date with my camera and the tree bark I love to take photos of?

What if I sat on the lawn chair and stared at the lake?

Now is the moment!

musemother

ps teaching what I need to learn, as Suzy put it today. That's why I am blogging and writing and teaching writing classes and leading retreats....I so need to learn/feel the value of 'me' time, down time, slow sacred space time.

Dear Reader

2010-10-07T09:00:00.000-04:00

I was flummoxed by a pain in the neck. I was running and getting things done and doing errands and being productive and crossing things off my list and typing away at 100 words a minute...feeling productive and 'good'.

And yet every night I've been lying in bed with this chronic pain in the neck and shoulders and even seventeen appointments with a chiropracter/naturopath and a physio therapist and umpteen other kinds of treatment (yes, osteopathy) are not making it go away.

An MRI is scheduled, an xray shows arthritis, inflammation, bone spurs...damage from a ski-doo accident when I was thirteen and really banged my spine. And yet, I have to wonder, what's behind this pain in the neck?

Dear Reader in meditaton this morning I felt so close to giving up all the 'busy-ness' that makes me feel useful. I felt so close to the soft understanding that the world needs our/my soft participation in the Slow feminine, in the inner connectedness to the sentient earth, to the sentient beings around me, more than it needs me to be busy.

I feel, now, looking out at the clouds zooming by over the lake amidst rain and dark grey water, that I have been living from the outside in for too long. My neck is asking me to stop, take stock and ultimately, say, I give up. I surrender. Please show me how to trust this soft inner place where I am not divided in two, body and mind, heart and head.

I want to be a channel for peace, I wrote in my bucket list. OK, so be careful what you ask for.

Being and living consciously cannot be watchwords or just talk, is my feeling this morning. LIving from the inside out - what would that feel like? It's been my mantra or 'tag line' for so long...it's been what I believe in. But can I really live inside it? Yes, oh yes, I can. Becaue the pain in the neck is crushing my resistance.

Dear reader, I am writing this today to remind myself that life is a great teacher. That the lessons are all from love. That my calling, as Jennifer Louden put it so well in her facebook notes, is calling me to be true to myself, not just for me, but for the transformation of all of us. Each one of us can answer the call within to be true to ourselves, and it will change the world. The change we want to see, we have to be....slowly, gently, with compassion and kindess, we can listen to the call.

We suffer when we disengage from the journey of discovery. Explore that inner listening, and let yourself be guided towards more opening, more truth, more being at peace with yourself, less 'keeping busy' to feel useful.

my thoughts on a rainy day
from inside
Jenn/musemother

Finding my Voice in the Silence

2010-09-24T11:33:00.001-04:00

It's ironic that in listening to the silence, I find my Voice.

I've been journaling and writing and leading classes on journal writing around this theme. But it just hit me this morning as I read this piece I copied from Heart of the Matter newsletter http://www.heartofbusiness.com/ by Mark Silver.

Silence is not the absence of noise, it is an active presence. If you listen with your heart, you can taste it. Take a moment now and listen for it in your heart.

Under the noise, behind, within the noise, there is a silent presence. It's palpable.
Don't try to grab it. Don't try to hold onto it. Instead, invite it in. Give it permission to take over everything within you, to push aside the noise, to fill you up.
Whatever noise is taking up your attention in this moment, kids, music, Twitter, notice it. Notice all the noise in your space. Take a minute to focus in on each one.
Next, in your heart say "No." If you like you can try the phrase "La ilaha illa'llah," which is pronounced pretty much like it reads. You're not resisting the noise, just acknowledging that all of that hubbub is not the truth.
Third, feel the longing in your heart for silence. Let the longing deepen.

Finally, ask in your heart for help in tasting the silence that is there and allowing it to flood in. Give permission to the silence to master you, to be your anchor.

Now, to some of you this may seem counterintuitive, but this is how I get in touch with my inner voice, my own wisdom, and my real heart's longing to be whatever I can be. I listen to the silence.

I've spent the last year journalling about the direction I want my life to take, in terms of working with women on retreats or classes, writing and blogging, and this is what appeared finally from out of the void, as My Theme: Finding my Voice.

I can't say it's all that original, but when I look back at my life story, from early beginnings in a large family of eight, to singing like a shy little sparrow in grade school, hiding in my room to play guitar in my teens, coming out of the bedroom to sing for others in my twenties and even write my own songs, to meeting my husband as a new 'guitarist' who could play bar chords so I could sing the songs I loved, to singing to my children when they were little to calm them, entertain them or divert them, to singing in a duo with my husband occasionally today, and performing in public with a barbershop quartet and chorus by night....

I am finding my Voice.

Through writing poetry in my teens, keeping a diary of sorts since around the time I met Jacques 26 years ago, to first applying to a Creative writing program with a very sentimental manuscript of poems, to finally 10 years later publishing a book of poems and birth journal (part of my Master's thesis in Creative Writing), to recording a CD of poems and one with friend and cellist Kim Gosselin, to leading workshops on the Feminine, the Body, and now one called Charting your Journey, through publishing short stories and poems about my own journey and about meditation, menopause, teen sexuality, and every Taboo topic that my mind wants to keep silent and ashamed....I am Finding my Voice.

There, I think I've said it.

I have also been inspired by Janet Quinn's book I am A Woman Finding my Voice, http://www.haelanworks.com/i_am_a_woman_finding_my_voice.htm and by Janet Connor's Writing down the Soul, http://www.writingdownyoursoul.com/ to mention just a few books I love.

I am very excited about attending a workshop with Natalie Goldberg at Kripalu http://www.kripalu.org/program/view/WNG-101/old_friend_from_far_away_the_practice_of_writing this November too, on Memoir writing, since the Voice keeps leading me back to my own stories.

And another wonderful on-line resource is http://www.writers.com/ for finding writing workshops and mentors.

So try practising letting the silence be your teacher, and let it help you find Your Voice.Then write, sing, dance it out into the World. Share your Voice, for the world would be a much too silent place if only the best song birds opened their throats and sang (paraphrased from a famous author).

musemother

Bask until the silence leaves. Rinse, repeat if desired.

Let the silence master you.

Home made Retreat

2010-09-16T09:10:00.000-04:00

Watching the sun rise over tree tops and leaves gently rustling in the slight breeze - I am ecstatic to be up here in St-Sauveur at my retreat house/chalet, playing house, placing dishes in cupboards, folding sheets and making beds. It feels like this is 'my own' house, somehow, just for me. Perhaps because I have come up here alone, to honour my work.

It has been decorated simply, white curtains, pine walls, wood floors. It feels homey yet very bare, the way I like it, just add a rug and a few chairs and it will be perfect (we bought it partly furnished, table and couch, beds in place).

I especially love the silence. A good place to meditate, write, prepare my class in. Yes! a whole day without telephone, email, disruptions, to concentrate on my work. If I can do this once a week it will be so amazing. I am very fed up of schedules and being busy. Am I finally ready to listen in and follow my inner guide? Unplug from the busy world?

What can I hear by listening in, trusting the silence, instead of fearing the emptiness?

Later, I lay outside on a blanket and rested my sore shoulders in the sun. Wearing a brace on right forearm because of irritated nerves from too much typing, lifting, overwork.

Sigh, I want to write and my body is saying, rest. This chalet will be a place for both.

Enter the silence....

musemother

Birthing as Heroic Task

2010-09-07T10:36:00.000-04:00

Labour Day weekend brought many parties for us this weekend. Yesterday was Le Bouilli, a traditional harvest supper with loads of vegetables and beef cooked slowly in a huge pot at my brother-in-law's place. The whole family (or almost) was there, including two pregnant nieces. Naturally, the conversation turned towards the coming birth of one of them, due in October.

My childbirth experiences were very different one from the other, and I don't believe in frightening future mother's by telling them in great detail what I went through. (The second child was born in the car, ten minutes away from the hospital). But I do clearly remember the labour, the physical work and concentration required of Labour, and the total focus it required of me, and when I began to talk about it, it brought me back to the words of Joseph Campbell, who said giving birth and becoming a mother is a woman's heroic task.

Just like a warrior must focus his mind and conquer his fears before battle, a new mother giving birth brings all of her self to the task. All her courage, all her strength and energy are required. She does need help and encouragement, yes, the nurses and doulah or companions, her husband can help her remember to breathe, but it is the inner work that gets done that is important, from the quality of her surrender and trust in the body's processes (and the more knowledge of these processes the better), to the letting go of fears of not being capable of passing this threshold. The journey is dangerous, as the forces within move the baby out into the world from his watery womb space, forcing him to cross the threshold into life outside the safety of his mother's enclosure. She will be turned inside out too, and perhaps lose all sense of separateness with the world. All her senses will awaken, and sharpen once he is born, whetted by the cries of her baby, and nothing will ever be the same. It is a spiritual birth of the mother, as well as the physical birth of the child, as they journey together through that tunnel.

For the first few days, if she allows it, she will feel at one with her baby, this being from another planet who has slipped like a fish through her legs. His eyes will be her mirror, his pain will be her pain. As she tunes into his needs and feels the milk tingle in her breasts even before he wakes, she will either accept or resist this intrusion, this call to selflessness, this giving over of the self to a larger need.

It will be the hardet (or the easiest) thing she will ever do, has ever done. To give her self to the needs of the vulnerable tyrant at her breast, as they both navigate new territory, and learn how to find contentment and ease together. What can prepare her? Focus, concentration, rest, inner strength, conscious letting go of expectations...of fear, of anxiety - allowing life to hold them both in its arms.

To fight this great battle for life by letting go, by surrendering, is kind of conumdrum. But that's what it takes.

nameste,
musemother

Cultivating a practice for self-care

2010-08-31T10:00:00.003-04:00

Why is it so hard to attend to our Inner Garden? To nourish ourselves on an inner level, to keep our commitments to ourselves to practice good self-care? The feedback I got from my last retreat brought this up - how can I continue to make time for myself, and why is it so hard?

Like eating your cereal every morning or brushing your teeth, nourishing your inner needs is a practice. It’s not something you can just think about once in a while, or muse about while on vacation. It is a daily practice that you build into your life.

Whether you decide that the best way to nourish your inner garden is to surround yourself with beautiful plants, move to a house by the water, write in your journal every morning, or do yoga on a regular basis, the important thing is that you follow through with a commitment to yourself. But how do we do this?

It’s easy to be lead by the outside demands, by the crazy whirlwind of activity, work, children, hobbies and responsibilities to others we need to fulfill. There's never enough time, we moan. But we often don’t even put ourselves on the list. Start by asking, in what area is your commitment to self-care lacking? Make a list of what is missing to create balance – is it a spiritual need, a physical need, an emotional need? Where do you feel supported and fulfilled, and where do you feel less ‘full’?

For instance, if I look at my own life, I have a few checks and balances. On the inner garden side, I have had a long standing practice of sitting meditation, every morning for over 30 years. I began to do yoga about 16 years ago, and that part still feels really good. But my self-care on the physical side is not ideal – I lack cardio exercise, I huff and puff going up hills, so I know I can treat my body better by getting out and walking briskly more often, or getting on that elliptical machine hidden in the basement. It feels good when I do it. So I will concentrate on remembering how good it feels to move my body. And how lousy it feels to be the last one up the hill.

My eating habits are pretty healthy. Check. But my commitment to my writing needs more ummph. I let it slide, I do laundry, check emails, write to friends on Facebook, basically, I work without a deadline so no projects are getting to the finished piile. For instance, the interview transcrips are on hold, while I stare at the tape recorder sitting on my desk and fill my day with other 'to do's. My poetry manuscript I have been working on sporadically, when I have time. I don’t know why I can’t make this a priority, but I think it's about believing in my own work enough to get doing it. The best solution for me will be to carve out a regular work time and not take phone calls or read emails during that time. This is a weak muscle that also needs exercise.

One way to increase your commitment to self care is to write about it in your journal. This too demands a commitment however. There will always be something in the way, something important calling your attention. A phone call, an email, a needy child, a volunteer project, a committee meeting....lack of sleep will make you sleep in and miss your appointed writing time. But if you’ve decided that you want to be more self-aware, if your intention is to be curious about your inner workings and understand your stresses, your joys, your obstacles and your achievements, writing in your journal is a very useful tool. Knowing that you will be pleased with the encounter with the Self could be the motivation you need to sit down and do it.

Don’t let not knowing what to write about be another hurdle. If you don’t know where to start, begin with a question. What do I need to think about today? What is bothering me, causing me lack of sleep? What scenario am I rehashing in my head? What guidance am I looking for? Or simply make a list – things I am happy about, things I am dissatisfied with, people I love to be with, things that drive me crazy, ways I can take better care of my inner garden....and write. Finding a teacher and taking a class is a good way to get started, to find motivation and inspiration for things to write about, and to start a regular schedule.

With practice, you develop a thirst for the good feeling movement, meditation, or journal writing brings to your body. You develop a feeling of calm inner peace by focussing inside. Nourish that desire for peace, let it guide you towards more and more inner work.

Pay attention to how it feels, does it make you feel good? That’s what will strengthen the muscle, to correlate the feeling you get, in the moment.

musemother

Monday Monday

2010-08-23T21:27:00.000-04:00

I have said it before, and I'll say it again....don't listen to the Negative Self-Talk that Weary Monday morning drivels in your ear.

It took me a couple of hours to shake off the apres-weekend fatigue, travelling, wine, good company for sure, but Monday morning it was hard to get moving.

If I listened to what my inner Critic/unfriendly inner shadow voice was whispering, I was headed for the dumps, no good, no energy, no mojo, no creativity, ready to give up on myself completely.

Fortunately, I put on some soothing Reiki music, did some yogic stretches, and drank a good cup of expresso, then after lunch I had an amazing appointment with my local chiropractor and healer who cracked a few vertebrae and got me cracking!

By mid-afternoon, I had started to shake off the fog and felt my normal self again, that is, I got out the files that needed looking at, wrote the newsletter I needed to write, and looked at my fall course work. Ah Mondays. They're not all the same, thank goodness, but today, it was hard to remember that the Inner Critic loves to kick me when I'm down. And that I should never ever respond or react as if that is my reality.

Anyway, it's Monday night now. Phew! I can go to bed early (now that I've watched all 3 taped episodes of So You Think You Can Dance, which kept me up late till midnight Sunday). Sweet dreams and happy Tuesday.

Divine feminine and all that

2010-08-05T08:53:00.004-04:00

Facebook turns up so many interesting leads - I was checking it out this morning, clicking on people's links, and found an article written in Huffington Post by a guy named Arjuna, about the deep sense of worship for his wife, embodying the Divine Feminine, and his process for peeling back the layers, going deeper in relationship.

Another woman, author of Writing down the Soul, http://www.writingdownthesoul.com/ asked on her facebook link, what about the Divine Masculine? Which is always a funny sounding question because we've been trained and enforced, it's practically encoded in our DNA, at least in a traditional way, to be in relation to a Divine Masculine in the form of G-O-D. Yahweh, Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, MOhammed, Allah, hmmmm they all have that in common.

But something else came up for me, immediately. The delicious feeling I had the other night, while I was dozing, half-asleep, spread out on the bed in my little cotton nightgown, and my significant other crept into the room and moved his warm hands up and down the length of my body, squeezing the rounder bits and cressing the long back muscles. I was enjoying the tingling sensations, but still half asleep, not really roused or aroused yet. Then he left to go change a light bulb outside, and walk the dog! leaving me in a state of anticipation for that meeting between the masculine and feminine....

here's the thing - what is divine defies description, it is 'other' yet it is familiar. It happens in trance, in meditation, in slow motion, in heightened states, in sixth senses and higher chakras.....words can't describe it. So maybe, what is meant by 'divine masculine' or feminine is just that....a place where words can't take us, but where souls meet, and touch, inside of bodies, melting our boundaries and separateness.

I don't worship that, but I adore it. I mean, I really love it when that happens. That merging that I can un-merge from. When we loosen our tight little baggage and just float in sensation together. When we get all primal, animal, grounded ino ur bodies, and yet transcend them too. This morning I woke up with a Beatles song in my head, 'Imagine I'm in love with you, it's easy cause I know...." and then I stretched, jumped in the shower singing and remembered, oh yeah, we made love last night. I fell asleep so satisfied, with a deep inner smile.

That union is not the same as the so-called 'divine union' of my soul with the larger Soul/Creator whatever you want to call it, that doesn't need two bodies to transport me. But it is pretty damn transcendent.

I think we're hard wired for that stuff.

have a great humid hot August dog-days kind of day,
jenn/musemother

Value of Retreats

2010-07-23T09:37:00.001-04:00

Yesterday was the Cultivating Your Inner Garden Retreat, at my home. Eight women joined me to create a wonderful space of inner focus and exploration.

A retreat is a funny thing. On the outside it doesn't look like much is happening. But for the mind, it can be like a pressure cooker; asked to reflect on a question in silence, it can seek to run like quicksilver or mercury - when you press on it it scatters in a hundred different directions. Or it can settle and center in the breathing body, thoughts mesmerized by the soothing rhythm or the soughing of wind in the leaves. Nature can soothe, like lapping water on the dock, or soft music: combine the two with a journal, some yoga and walking, an inspiring quote, and voila - a sacred space is created. Ritual also does this, by repeating a song or phrase, lighting a candle flame, walking in a labyrinth towards the center, ancient routines to entrain the wild horses, corral the mind into a focussed pattern.

What do we gain? a heat or pressure is created, and something shifts. Sometimes it's seismic, sometimes subtle, but we gain clarity or understand a problem in a new way. We may feel like nothing has happened on the surface, but clarity, like a strong focussed beam of light has just lit up a dark corner, illuminated an area of shadow.

If we are gentle with ourselves and trusting of the process, a retreat can be restful, rejuvenating, relaxing, even while we are focussed inwards. It does take effort to stay inside the container provided by a retreat. The container is created by the structure of the day, by the respect of the retreatants for the focus and concentration required - by the ritual activity or by the relaxed interior gaze of the questions posed in our journalling.

Time spent on retreat stretches, loses its shape, becomes eternal for a moment - then elastic, returns.

How to follow up on a retreat and put into practice the learnings made? Take baby steps, give yourself reminders to stop and breathe; regular practise is built over time by paying daily attention to our need. For instance, I need peace and quiet to reflect, so I build a time in my scheudle for meditation and writing, even if only fifteen minutes a day. I post reminders to myself on my mirror, and I write affirmations to help strengthen my resolve to be kind to myself. I practise paying attention, slowing down when I feel the rushing happening. I don't expect to transform myself overnight, but I listen to the impulse, the desire for peace, the desire for soul food. I pay attention to my hunger, and I feed it.

I am worthy of taking care of my inner needs, as well as my physical ones.
I deserve to experience this peace of mind.
I allow myself to take all the time I need.

nameste,
Jenn, retreat leader

Cultivate your Inner garden

2010-07-08T12:09:00.002-04:00

I've been reading up on materials for a retreat coming up, about what fertilizes your soul, and have serendipitously also found a number of good books at a local used book store.

Woman, Earth and Spirit, The Feminine Symbol and Myth by Helen Luke is full of wonderful understanding about the creative feminine spirit.

Too often we align ourselves with the outer values of the work force; production, performing, success and goal making drive us forward until we hit the wall of exhaustion. Luke would say this is because we don't value the feminine values of receiving, openness, holding space. The feminine fertilizes in the dark space where the seed lies in the earth, receiving nourishment, light and water and heat from above. It is the earth's nature to foster growth in the dark so that the seed may reach up to the light. This inner fertilizing of our soul growth is as important as the creative output phase.

The soul needs tranquility, and rest, not only fire; inner cultivation occurs in the darkness by resting, finding completeness and wholeness from within. "The way back and down to those springs [water of life] and to the roots of the tree is likewise the way on and up to the spirit of air and fire in the vaults of heaven." Luke

If we don't give ourselves time to rest and be still, to listen within, due to the pressure to perform and feel worthy, then we "scorch our inner garden with the destructive fire". We burn up, we burn out. We feel dry and empty.

So to find the fertilizing power you need, think about what elements you need to help you rest and go within.

Think about going on retreat, or making yourself a mini-retreat for an hour or two, by unplugging the phone, the computer and emails. Even over lunchtime, you can make a mini-retreat by walking outside in the sunshine, finding a shady tree to sit under, reflecting on the Waters of life that nourish you and what they may be.

nameste,
jenn/musemother

Summer Time

2010-07-02T11:44:00.000-04:00

Good morning from the Cafe Aurora!

I have no internet connection at home, until my power supply cord arrives in the mail, so here I am at a cafe having a late breakfast and writing to you.

Had a great poetry reading the other night, reading a very emotionally strong and resonant poem, Birth and Death Mother. At least three people asked me for a copy, but since it's been sent to a poetry contest, I will hold off on publishing it here.

Summer time, day after Canada Day (see overthetopquartet blog next door for picture of our new shoes), singing with the quartet is fun and light-hearted, but I must confess I am glad to take a summer break.

I am taking a very inspiring retreat coaching class with Helene Van Mannen, retreatcoaches.com (look her up on facebook). Very very packed with good information, and I will be experimenting with retreats at my place this summer. We have a winning combination: the lake nearby, the big deck to do yoga flow on, a hot tub to relax those tense muscles, and an awesome group of women to share with.

It's becoming clearer than ever that this work is what is calling my heart, as well as journal writing classes for women.For those who have patiently followed my blog, in all its questing for meaningful work and where to put my focus, this is good news. No more whining and complaining from me about how lost I feel, OK?

It's been a long haul, I've had to be patient, and so I give all you fellow seekers in mid-life this advice: hang in there, write down your soul in your journal, keep asking the questions and listening to the answers from within, take chances and when you hear a call, answer it. Take baby steps and grow your confidence, and find an unconditional support person who loves you and will encourage you to say Yes when the call comes.

have a great long weekend,
musemother

Summer Solstice and upheaval

2010-06-22T20:48:00.000-04:00

http://www.aurumastrology.blogspot.com/

My sister Sue is blogging about astrology at the blog link above. If you are curious about the Summer Solstice, the coming full moon and the eclipse about to hit us soon, and the effects it has on the inner and outer landscape, check it out.

There is lots going on in my household. Daughter, 18, just back from Germany is taking off to Quebec City for two days (have a safe drive in the rain Caitie!) to celebrate St-Jean Baptiste Day with friends on the Plains of Abraham (an historic battle field if you don't know).

Julien and his dad are off to Bonventure in the Gaspe for salmon fishing trip with their brothers, cousins, uncles, 'les gars', a male bonding tradition every June 23.

So I will be musing by myself, reflecting on the five day Rotary International Convention and the tprf.org booth that I helped build and volunteered at for 3 days. So many connections with people thirsty to serve, ready to help the world with clean water, nutritious food and disaster relief efforts. Very inspiring those Rotarians.

Maybe I'll even get a chance to work on my Retreat Coaching teleclass homework....building better retreats to offer in the fall of 2010.

Maybe sometime this summer I'll open up my journal and begin to write down my soul.....listening into the the inner voice and letting it have free rein, without censoring it.

Maybe I'll find some time to play....and I definitely will make myself a retreat at Kripalu in July, with my buddy Brigitte.

Alors....happy solstice.

nameste, musemother

The Productivity Trap

2010-06-15T08:20:00.000-04:00

Big article in the Globe & Mail this morning about how many families don't have time to eat and play together, but are constantly running from work to soccer games to caring for aging parents - they quote statistics about the low number of times a family sits down with a teen son or daughter to eat dinner.

Wellbeing is the rubrique it falls under, in the report to come out Tuesday from the Canadian Index of Wellbeing called Caught in the Time Crunch: Time Use, Leisure and Culture in Canada.

"Canada has become a society operating 24 hours a day and, as a result, more people are working odd hours – weekends, nights, rotating shifts. That has cut into the time they would normally spend with their spouses and their children and doing the things they really like to do. And that can lead to burnout.

“If we are on this treadmill, we will end up being less productive, less contributing to society, less knowledgeable,” said Roy Romanow, the former Saskatchewan premier who is the chair of the Index of Wellbeing’s advisory board. “And therefore, not only is our well-being being affected, but so might our productivity be affected.”

One in five Canadian adults reports being caught in a time crunch, with slightly more women than men saying they feel like they are perpetually under the gun."

Women are often the caregivers in the family, and so their workload is the highest, and their leisure time the lowest. Of course, we women are sometimes bred into this role and see it as natural. We have a hard time taking time for ourselves on a regular basis.

Down time, slowing down time, self-care, time to do nothing at all and just veg, this is what prevents burn-out and in the end increases our productivity. All farmers know (or used to) that letting a field lie fallow for a year was necessary to allow the earth to rest and recuperate from all the nutrients going into a crop, and rebuild the soil quality for next year. Creative artists also know that there is a cycle to creativity, and fallow times or 'off times' are needed to foster it. Creative loafing is a term that speaks to this. Sometimes the best thing you can do is play with your blocks, a sand-pile, playdoh, or get into your right brain a little and stop thinking. Sometimes brainstorms come to you while you're just waking up from a nap in a hammock or staring at clouds.

Why don't we allow ourselves this down time or loafing time? The productivity trap catches us all in its snare. We are constantly running to catch up, to get everything done in one day. We get addicted to the adrenaline rush of being busy, always reachable by phone, email or blackberry. We keep running on the treadmill like rodents to keep up with our house payments, education bills, repairs on the car, and we tend to value less activities that feed the soul, like art, music, poetry, picnics. We see them as extras that are the first thing to go when life becomes too busy.

I think our world is being pushed to the edge of this productivity mode. Don't wait until illness or burn-out forces you to take a break. Schedule a break into your agenda today. Give yourself more time off, time to be unplugged, time to appreciate the little moments of peace that come your way. Summer is here, in the northwestern hemisphere. Time to play, time to get outside, time to lie on the grass and count clouds. Just for a little bit.

Play catch up with your soul, listen to its longing for peace, tranquility, its desire for recognition. Slow down to the slowest part of you for at least part of your day, every day.

You'll be doing your family a favour, your community a favour, by being less likely to fall off the treadmill.

nameste

musemother

How a Good Night's Sleep can Change Everything

2010-06-10T09:23:00.000-04:00

Monday I woke up feeling sick, so I slept in an extra hour, meditated lying down (risky, I know) to prevent dizziness, purposely didn't get on the computer until after a shower and time outside with my journal. I did reply to a few emails and managed to get some laundry done, walk the dog, do groceries, but mostly it felt like a low-key go slow kind of day. I even made some medicinal tea (soy bancha ginger) and quinoa flake porridge to heal the intestinal upset, and found the time to make a nice supper.

The day went smoothly enoug, as I slowed down, took time to take care of myself. I even had the energy to try out a new red wine/rose sauce for chicken in spite of my lack of appetite. I just didn't push myself to 'get things done', and things happened at their own pace. I also lay for 20 minutes with my hubby's head in my arms at the end of the day, comforting him for a hard day - one of those where everything you do goes wrong - soothed his forehead, all the while thinking - because I took care of me today, I am in a healthy space to give out and take care of him.

I was in bed at 9:30 with a book, and slept deeply.

Then, bing, Tuesday morning I woke up and my energy was back. The headache and tummy ache were gone. I felt tons better. Ready to sort out my daughter's messy room (while she's travelling in Europe), do more laundry (my son is a bit overwhelmed with the laundry baskets piling up, as he's working). I got an agenda going, replied to emails, and sat down to write in my journal, all before 10.00 a.m.

Sometimes a good night's rest changes everything.

Also, when my heart is in a good space and I am gentle with myself, a healing presence is all I have to offer. When I rush out every night, leave them to reheat a frozen dinner, they can survive, but the love is not the same as in a home-cooked meal lovingly prepared.

I still want to do that whenever I can (at least 3 or 4 nights out of 7). And teach them to prepare healthy meals as well, of course.

The value of a calm, centered caretaker in the home, whether male or female, cannot be underestimated. I hope you dads at home that follow this blog will send me your own stories of how taking care of yourself helps you take care of your loved ones.

have a great day,
musemother

The worth of a woman's work

2010-05-31T11:31:00.001-04:00

"Consider a woman in Somalia who rises early to walk two miles to the nearest well to get water for her family, rturns to feed her children and ready them for school, spends the morning working the soil of the family garden, the afternoon tending to the sick and infirm of her village, then in the event cooks and mends clothing and sings songs to her tired children and makes love with her husband. As measurd by the G.D.P. this woman has no value. She is useless; a drain on the nation's wealth."

What is the true measure of the wealth of a nation? It's a good question, posed by the author of Sabbath, Wayne Muller.

When we create art, when we create beauty in our surroundings, when we experience joy and good health, when we measure our lives not only by the money we earn for 'producing' but for the presence of love, beauty, health and harmony around us, it is perhaps not measurable on any economic index.

Or is it?

We are learning to value clean water and healthy fish stocks, after the mess of the BP Oil Spill. We are putting a monetary value on the education of girls in Africa. We can also learn to value our time for just being, for tuning into our inner peace, for experiencing good health mentally and emotionally as well as physically.

Know that the effort towards valuing our work in creating a peaceful environment for our families begins with each one of us. I begin by placing value on my work as a woman working in the home.

I place value on the work I do of writing poems and inspiring blogs.
I value my contribution to the human race as a singer and entertainer.

I may be a semi-professional at a lot of things, meaning I don't get paid much for it, if anything, but my worth as a woman is priceless.

musemother

Enjoying the Rest

2010-05-21T14:29:00.001-04:00

Remember that wonderful man I mentioned I had shared a life with? well it was 26 years on May 19. We are headed off downtown, sans enfants, to have supper and stay in a fancy schmancy hotel in Old Montreal, get a massage first, and relax....and celebrate those 26 years, (which we take 5 at a time).

C'est le weekend! as they say in Montreal. And a three-day one in Canada.

Sigh....looking at my back yard and the lake, there are 2 deck chairs sitting on the dock, just waiting for two bodies to sit down in them.

Tomorrow I have a singing engagement in Vankleek Hill at 9:30 in the morning.....with the chorus, so better not to stay up too late over that romantic dinner. Then after singing, home to watch the Hockey Game (we won last night, oh my god!) and perhaps sit under the stars on that dock.

enjoy this lovely period of recreation and rest,
musemother

Follow your bliss

2010-05-13T12:40:00.002-04:00

Just found a box of candles I had ordered from zena moon and the one scented with strawberry says, Follow your Bliss.

I love that quote from Joseph Campbell, and the meaning behind it - do what you love and the money will follow. It means taking risks, or feeling your way out of the comfort zone, often, stretching yourself into a new space, using your imagination.

But think how your life would be without it? Once I got some help in visualizing this from a counsellor. She had me imagine myself leading retreats, the faces on the women after finishing a restful creative retreat, the thanks they gave me, the way I felt. Then she had me imagine down the road a ways, perhaps a book tour, or a publicity tour of some kind, opening up the country, then the continent, perhaps the world to my retreats.

At the end of five minutes of visualization, I felt energized, alive, happy, fulfilled.

Then she had me imagine the opposite: if I stayed where I was, doing what I was, hiding my light, not sharing it with the world, cooped up in my little room, in a funk of mild depression. What did it feel like in my body? my shoulders sagged, and my head drooped. Five years down the road, I was more anxious, withdrawn, depressed, and my health was deteriorating. I had no energy, no vitality. I surprised myself in seeing my mother's body in this future. That's how she looks now. A person who so gave herself to what was expected of her, that she lost herself somewhere along the way. I could see myself ending up bitter, tired, unwell, battling fatigue and depression.

Back to that candle - the sticker's on zena moon candles always have great quotes. This one says,

"Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it., Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." Friedrich Nietzche.

Wow! I want to feel alive, that's what I want.

happy May, spring of all possibilities

musemother

Gentling the Woman's Soul

2010-05-03T14:28:00.002-04:00

Listening to a wonderful CD this morning, by Karen Drucker, A Retreat of my Own.

Monday mornings are retreat time for me. I like to light a candle, (don't turn the computer on or read emails till afterwards), play soothing music, and treat myself tenderly.

Yoga stretches, pigeon pose for my hips, downward dog for my hamstrings, shoulder rolls, whatever can move me into my body and into receptive mode.

Then I worked on my retreat schedule for the New Moon retreat upcoming.

Oddly enough, at my chiro/naturopath appointment later that morning, the subject of Receiving came up. She was getting that I had some energetic blockages around being kind to myself, taking care of me. And we cleared some old baggage (stored in the body since a very early age, and reinforced with time as a belief system). I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say, I had no conscious awareness that these issues were still so strong in me. Since I lead retreats and blog about self-care, I assumed I knew how to take care of myself. I eat well, I live well, and I even allow myself a massage once or twice a year (hah!).

Anyway, the upshot of my morning, is that I am now willing to receive. I am ready to make room for myself in the busy schedule, and I am willing to be taken care of. There, I said it. Not so hard really, but words alone are not enough.

I welcome you all to consider how you can be more gentle with yourself today, strive less, push yourself less, make room for the heart and breath, and really allow the beauty you are to be what you love.

Baby steps.....

jenn/musemother

ps check out the link below

Good News from Imagine a Woman International: May 3, 2010

This year the Imagine a Woman poem is celebrating its 15th year anniversary with a new website and new programs and opportunities for personal growth and professional enhancement. You're invited to the launch of the IAW WomanSpirit Empowerment Program, today May 3, with free inspirational gifts and complimentary coaching at http://www.imagineawoman.com/. We'll be celebrating WomanSpirit all week so get your party clothes on, invite your friends, and come on over.

Mothering Myself

2010-04-28T16:33:00.000-04:00

I am planning a retreat, and in that mode of research for articles, exercises, inspiration. Ran into book store and picked up a pile of books, one of them being The Mother Factor. I did not buy it but perused it, looking at its chapter headings and diving in occasionally.

Mothering has such deep currents for me. Being mothered by a loving mother, also a sometimes violent and frustrated mother, often negligent and preoccupied with her addictions, has left a legacy, for sure.

I can see myself in the child the author describes who is too easily offended at criticism, who needs to rescue others, who reads others emotional needs superbly and feels responsible for other's feelings - under the heading of Unpredictable Mother, yes, that would describe it.

How can I mother myself, give myself nurturance, feed the child that was feeling abandoned and unloved some of the time, or left to hold the fort at too young an age?

It is such an important issue for me since I have been mothering two children. That goes without saying. But hitting menopause, it also became evident that the stresses and emotional baggage were like sparks to the fire of hormonal imbalance. It became necessary to find a bucket of water to douse these sparks, or at least, uncover why they are still smouldering.

Loving kindness, compassion, understanding, all those huge words with Huge Meanings, are only accomplishable in little moments, in one on one's, in how I feed myself, allow enough rest time, provide fun and playful activities, rock my angry child inside, soothe the hurt and not beat myself up with blame.

Mothering myself would involve liking myself enough to take care of me. Understanding my unconscious reasons for ignoring my own needs enough to start doing something about it.

I invite all unmothered or imperfectly mothered readers to stop for a moment, before Mother's Day, and think of serious ways of taking care of your own unmothered self, by mothering your self. Little crooning lullabies, soft music, hush now, sweet child, rest, rock yourself to sleep. Here is something good for you to eat.....

try it

musemother

5 Things I Can Imagine Myself Doing Tonight

2010-04-26T18:39:00.000-04:00

Hockey is drawing to a close, but tonight is perhaps the last game with the Canadiens in Montreal, and my hubby has got great tickets, so guess where he is?

That lead me to my computer after an early supper, K out dancing in class, J working on school projects, and me by my lonesome....wondering what to do?

Should I rent a video (walk over to the video rental sstore in the village and give the dog and I some exercise?), catch up on severeal movies listed in the Rolling Stone magazine article I'm reading on Glee (A Mnighty Wind, Best in Show), The Fugitive are mentioned and I've only seen one of those

OR

sit down and write a poem about the 2 fire trucks in front of my house, and the 4 fireman down by the water on the boat ramp with binoculars, and the 2 police boats out on the water near Docker's Island rescuing somebody?

OR

read Facebook and update my profile page (already done) and click on all the links on my home page from friends who have posted videos, photos, smart and clever sayings...funny quotes, inspiring messages...

OR

start a new Diana Gabaldon book, after finishing (finally!) the Fiery Cross - I have never taken so long to really get into a book, but the end was packed full of action

OR

watch TV? (nothing much on though, and I hate watching TV unless it's a good movie)

Which 5 things would you do if you had a free evening to goof off?

musemother/jenn

One day at a time

2010-04-20T16:12:00.001-04:00

One day at a time, one goal at a time, taking little steps out of overwhelm ...

Today, after meditating, I jumped up to read my emails - first mistake. Should have written in my journal first, as usual. So the list of things to do got bigger very quickly. Took out my journal and began to write down all my commitments, various volunteer things I've taken on, committees, raffle prizes, fundraising, chorus activities, board meeting notes to write up, and way at the bottom of the list was Writing. Stories. Poems. Even below that was, take care of self.

Sigh, it was 10:30 before I took a shower (advantage of working at home in my pyjamas).

Sudden mini-panic attack and dizziness - deep breath out, slow breath in.

Ok - since the list is overwhelming, I thought spring cleaning would work better. Guests coming this week, so strip the guest room bed, wash all the kids sheets, pillowcases, the king size bed....a mountain of white sheets on the floor outside the laundry room.

Dash outside after lunch for a quick walk up Alan Hill with Mollie - ah, once outside the door the bright green of new buds, the star magnolia blossoms, the smell of grass and old fall leaves underfoot welcomed me back to "ground center". Breathing in the smells with Mollie, as she ran from muddy path to boggy grass. All the new shoots and little yellow and blue flowers calmed my mind.

Back to the house, and computer, emails, notes to type up - bing bang got em all done. And suddenly at 2:00, 3 teen girls took over the kitchen, cooking up snacks and cutting each other's hair...so I escaped to my room to edit that story.

This has been one hell of a day, started out rocky, ending up satisfying - I got one story rewritten, copied and into an envelope for a writing contest. Made a rehearsal plan for my quartet and helped solve a last minute hosting change for the women's circle....little emergencies that had me stymied and panicked this morning got resolved.

I credit the laundry. When I need to focus, it helps to put one foot in front of the other and just do something useful. Clean a room or a closet, empty a desk drawer and sort it. File stuff where it belongs. Fold sheets and make the beds. Must be that Feng Shui of the soul tip I learned last week...

have a great week
musemother
ps singing this week at the Yellow Door coffeehouse with Over the Top

Making Space for the Heart

2010-04-12T16:03:00.000-04:00

How confusing to live in the 21st century and wonder about who I am...

Lately I learned a bit about numerology and discovered I am a number 7, a bit of a seeker, hermit, deep thinker type which didn't surprise me too much. Add that to my zodiac sign of Scorpio and my Chinese sign of Horse, and the picture rounds out a little more.

This should be enough for my curious mind, but always the seeker, I am open to finding inspiration from many sources and through my facebook page and Owning Pink web network, I've been exposed to several life coaches and their approaches for how to learn more about What I Love, What I want to Do, Who I Am.

One insists we need to Feng Shui our souls, declutter and do a 7-day cleanse; another encourages me to find my Inner Organizer, another would like me to discover my life purpose through buying her book on Career change, yet another website for women's retreats invites me to manifest the life of my dreams and attend a tele-workshop with a coach. The line that appealed to me most was from the comfort queen: a link about Freedom from Self Improvement, by Jennifer Louden at http://www.comfortqueen.com/.

So what is a girl to do, when she thinks she has an inspiring word or two to share, a possible book to launch and a desire to help women find themselves, yet an overwhelming desire to stop looking outside herself for the answers? And a definite overwhelm with Self-Improvement....

If, as a Globe and Mail article recently stated, we really do get wiser as we get older, then accessing that inner wisdom should be second nature, shouldn't it?

Can I turn off the outside influences just for one day, or one week, and listen to my own inner voice? can I show up for my journal in the mornings (yes, another prompt from The Artists Way author Julia Cameron), and access my soul (Writing down your soul, another guidebook)?

The answers often come when it's calm, when I'm resting or meditating, when I've put a kabosh on the rushing, urgent email and phoning, and busy taskmaster Self.

The answers come when I make space for them, offer my listening hear to their whisper. When I invite them in.

Hold space for your heart to speak to you today.

musemother

Life Partners

2010-04-05T10:06:00.001-04:00

A pair of mallard ducks just drifted past my window on the lake, and somehow it reminds me of my life partner and husband.

You've read the stories of geese who mate for life, and how they follow each other - if one is injured or takes a rest during their long migration, the other one follows. And how they take turns leading the V shaped flock so that no one bird has to fight the headwinds alone all the time.

Partners for life - it used to scare me, before we got married 25, almost 26 years ago (May 19, 1984). We lived together in an apartment for a while, just to stop the crazy making back and forth in the mornings, getting changed for work at two different places after spending the night together.

Marriage was on the agenda, and I was promoting it, oh yes. But secretly, I was struggling with the idea of 'eternity' and 'forever', all those diamond ring ads boast about.

Forever seemed too long to make a commitment, even if we were head over heels in love. So I came up with a plan that I had devised in a high school social sciences project: 5 year contracts. We would renew our vows or contract if you like, every 5 years. That way I could manage a smaller chunk of eternity at a time. It made it seem more manageable.

5 contracts later, it seems to be still working. Through miscarriages and loss, through going back to school (both of us, one at a time), through babies, strollers, sleepless nights and now teenage years, through stresses and strains and midlife restlessness and even through menopause and andropause, we are still drifting together down the current like that pair of mallard ducks.

I'd like to thank my life partner for just being there, for kissing me on the back of the neck every morning on his way to the office, for bringing me into such a wide and love-filled family, for helping me prepare an Easter brunch that lasted till dinner last night and beyond, for playing music with me, for being in harmonious synchronicity most of the time, and for just being who he is, a loveable guy.

back to work people,
luv
jenn/musemother

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

2010-04-02T08:44:00.001-04:00

http://www.imagineawoman.com/home/say-happy-birthday-to-imagine-a-woman

Happy Birthday Wishes to Imagine a Woman poem and website. The party is going on all day today, April 2, so stop by and check it out.

Join the Woman Spirit Circle.

Read the inspiring poem that started it all.

Happy Easter/Passover weekend! Enjoy the spring sunshine.

Jennifer/musemother

Stress Equation

2010-03-23T14:22:00.002-04:00

Mike Moore at http://www.motivationalplus.com/mpimages/gameoflifesmall.jpg

How Stress affects the Body:

Unresolved, unexpressed painful emotions = physiological stress = immune system dysfunction, dgeneration of body systems and abnormal cell growth, + time = illness and disease

So there you have it, a simple equation, isn't it?

Where are you on the scale of one to ten on the Stress Barometer?

Have you resolved your unresolved painful emotions? or do you even know where they are living in your body?

Are you feeling overtired, overwhelmed and under motivated about life in general?

The best remedy I can think of is Rest. Unplug, hunker down, and take a nap.

Second best (but not one I readily turn to): Exercise, fresh air, a brisk walk near water or trees

Third best (highly recommend): talking with a close friend or bosom pal

But my favourite Self-Awareness tool is my journal. I try and make time to write every day even if its only for 10 minutes. Free hand writing is best - just sit and let yourself express whatever you are feeling, following no set pattern, not lifting your hand off the page. First thing in the morning is a good time for accessing the subconscious, fresh from dreams. (recommended by Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way) http://www.theartistsway.com/ .

Another method of understanding the sources of stress and/or emotional pain is through Visual Journalling. I've discovered that it allows a similar process of self-discovery but through drawing (crayons, pastels). The idea is not to produce a work of art, but to access the wisdom of the right brain, let the body talk to us in its metaphors (circles, houses, colours, shapes, flowers, rainbows, dark pits).

Most of us think stress is normal, and we just live with it. We don't question where it's coming from, or we assume it's just part of life: if I can't change it, I might as well accept it.

What if you looked at things differently?

Take some time to access and assess your body's wisdom today. Explore the 'pain in your neck', or the 'cramp in your gut'. What stresses you? What's keeping you from your joy?

Emotions are teachers, and we need to allow their safe expression. Don't ignore your own needs, make them felt, seen and heard. Dance with them.

According to the authors of Visual Journaling, work with cancer patients has shown that, the act of expressing a stress-producing emotion through drawing/painting moves the emotion energetically outside the body where it can no longer activate the stress response.

Go for some crazy scribbling, in your notebook or sketch pad. Ask the question, and receive the answer.

Do it now!
jenn/musemother

stress equation from: Visual Journalling, Going Deeper than Words, Barbara Ganim and Susan Fox

Rest and Sabbath

2010-03-15T18:08:00.002-04:00

What is we gave ourselves one day a week to truly rest?

What if we unplugged our social networks, our computers, emails, blackberries, for just one day?

What if we listened instead to the birds, to the grass growing, to the clouds scudding across the spring sky at twilight?

What if we let the fox come out of hiding and leap down to our border’s edge to stare at us?

What if we noticed the fat skunk waddling out of the culvert after dinner on a walk down our street?

What if we gave the heart a rest, some ‘do nothing’ down time? Without TV or radio? With only the heart’s own rhythm for accompaniment?

What if we bathed in silence for one hour?

Would the world stop?

Would our anxiety be less?

What if in that day of rest, we sat and had a heart to heart talk with our son, daughter, spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, or with ourself?

What if?

Clear your mind

2010-03-08T17:19:00.003-05:00

After ecstasy, the laundry!

Zen philosopher

Don't you love coming home to your own bed after being away on vacation?

But don't you also hate the laundry? there are several piles of laundry on my floor right now. My husband did a few loads yesterday, and even folded them in neat piles (guess he was desperate for some clean socks and underwear). I managed to get two more loads done today, and my daughter is doing her own, (so I really can't complain).

But besides the piles of white, dark and pale on my wood floor, it's the mental clutter and confusion that got me down today. I was so clear on my purpose a few weeks ago, then I left for vacation and relaxed my mind, with lots of reading by the pool, swimming in turqouise waters, drinking afternoon wine and singing and dancing whenever possible.

This morning, back to ordinary life and reality: off to the dentist with my daughter, so I postponed my own writing and reflecting (tried to write in the dentist's reception area but the local radio station playing top 20 music made it difficult). Of course, she snuck in a quick shopping stop since we were downtown. And a quick stop to buy sushi for lunch (and groceries).

Did I mention I then needed a nap? 3 hours of sleep two nights ago, between airports and flights had created a serious sleep deficit (not to mention watching the Oscars till midnight last night). All that to say, during my nap, or somewhere in the end of it, I began to mentally berate myself for all the things I wasn't getting done, for my lack of energy and focus, for the confusion I felt after reading about mommy blogs with hundreds of thousands of followers (and comparing them to my meagre following), and then the flood of things I had not done or was unclear about doing just got worse.

Finally I jumped out of bed, since it wasn't feeling very restful, and got back on the computer. Re-reading some of the emails I received while away, I ran across one from Jennifer Louden, a link to her Facebook page www.jenniferlouden.com and an entry on Simple Action. It recommended taking one step at a time, not trying to do it all at once (ie write a paragraph not a whole chapter), and also recommended being kind to myself, ie not beating myself up mentally. How timely was that! I had just been writing in my journal about how I needed to feel ok right now, and stop feeling as if there is something wrong with me.

Then I ran into a message from Lao Tzu, through my sister Sue, which said, clear the mental clutter: Cease all restless activity and your true nature will appear. Correct your mind.

That would describe my nap, lots of useless, restless mental activity, making lists of all the things I need to do - since I have a chorus concert and competition coming up and my quartet is singing two new songs also, there is a lot I felt I should be doing today.

My advice to myself is simple: let go of mental anguish, clear up mental clutter. Sit in the quiet of your room and listen to soothing music. Make a mini-retreat and write in your journal. Help yourself out of confusion by staying in the present moment. I am not this flotsom and jetsom rushing downstream in the muddy waters. I am clear water. Relief and stillness floods my being just to be reminded of that.

Nameste,

jenn/musemother

In the Stillness of Retreat

2010-02-19T11:46:00.000-05:00

In the stillness of this moment, I am peace.

I'm listening to a Retreat music CD, taking a few moments to prepare for a retreat March 14 that I will lead at H-OM yoga studio in Hudson, Quebec.

This music is gently rocking me into a feeling of peace, like a lullabye, coming to a slower breathing rate, in spite of the frantic pace of the morning, trying to pack, make lists, prepare for a 2 week vacation in Turks & Caicos (yes, I am so lucky!).

I am waiting, I allow myself to wait,
I am waiting, I allow myself to wait.
My life's been moving , way too fast
I need to stop and take a breath
to see what the Lord wants me to do
so for now I wait and I listen....

Wish I could post the music too, it's very relaxing and soothing piano and voice.

Just wanted to leave you with a reminder to Breathe, Listen, Wait, Rest...if you are in transition, if you are impatient to start something new, if you are leaving something behind, if you are just crazy busy and don't know when you'll get a break.....Take One Now.

"I will only go as fast as the slowest part of me....I hold myself like a newborn baby child."

Don't wait for a break down, a broken leg, or a break-up to push you into Self-Care mode. Be gentle with yourself, with your tender heart, now, today, this moment.

You are precious, valuable and loved :)

take good care,
musemother/jenn

music cd available from A Woman's Way www.awoman's way.com
or
www.karendrucker.com for the music from A Retreat of My Own

Being Present and Belonging

2010-02-12T16:58:00.002-05:00

“The shortest distance in the world is the one between you and yourself.” John O’Donohue

Even though the above statement is true, the loneliness I can experience being estranged from my own Presence is the loneliest feeling in the world. Even if I am somewhat connected to others, if I am not connected to mySelf, I don’t feel as deep a connection to the others.

Sometimes it can feel like I’m miles away from myself when I am not really present, like a divided self living in one body. That feeling of being lonely, even in a crowd, of not belonging anywhere, is a feeling of not being connected. We are lonely for ourselves, essentially. We are longing to meet face to face with that inner Friend, to see our own face in a mirror of calm. This meeting brings a feeling of immense satisfaction, serenity and peace.

When I am self-aware, or present and conscious, not in the psychological sense, but in the way of being present inside or mindful, then I am also aware of the inner observer watching and listening, stepping back from thought and mind’s chatter. Through meditation, through looking at myself in the mirror within, comes a stillness of the mind that also brings a feeling of being with a larger Presence. I feel a oneness with myself (and my Self) that does not come from reading a book or staring at a candle. It feels like the two halves have been united, there’s a wholeness about me.

How does my own lack of connection manifest? On a daily basis, I work alone. I am in my home, writing, reading, and surfing the web on different topics or blogging about what interests me. Sometimes I am working on a book project or poetry. But mostly I am alone all day, except for my dog and cats, and occasional hungry teenagers ravaging the kitchen for food. Craving human connection, I wait for my email box to fill up with replies to emails I have sent, or information, or replies to blog posts, or replies to replies I have left on other blogs – some days I wonder, why is the world so silent? Having nothing new in my inbox is a sad feeling. When there is mail, it's like a confirmation that I am here, and someone is responding to me.

I feel such a longing for belonging – for finding my tribe, for meeting like-minded women who are a bit windy mouthed as I am, who want to hash things out, research, search again, find all the alleys and byways and tributaries of subjects of interest, about our sexuality, about our need for presence, and peace, about mid life and menopause, about independence and starting anew, about creativity and compulsivity .... about life in general. But I know that ultimately, I need to love being with myself, and then I will love even more being with everyone else.

I fill my need for presence and connection in different ways. I meditate, I practise yoga. I have a bi-monthly women’s circle meeting with cherished friends. I teach occasionally, to get out of the house. Mostly I am a bit of a hermit, but a hermit with an email habit. I love to get emails from people. So if you’re reading this blog, please send me a comment.

Love to hear from you,

Jenn/musemother

Ps Happy Valentine’s Day

also blogging at Owning Pink (see sidebar)

Dreams and Visions

2010-02-08T11:00:00.000-05:00

"The heart of all creativity is the awakening and flowering of individuality. The mystery and magic of being an individual is to love life in response to the deep call within, the call to become who we were dreamed to be...the divine blueprint of the soul. This is where true freedom awaits us. Freedom...is the poise of the soul at one with a life which honours and engages its creative possibility." from Beauty, by John O'Donohue

Over the weekend I was inspired to sit down with my journal and start to draw up plans for a dream of mine: a retreat centre where I could offer journal writing classes, have yoga teachers do classes in the morning, have a place to show videos from Words of Peace (www.wopg.org) and offer a haven or shelter from the turmoil without and within.

The crazy thing is, I am taking steps to find partners to help me find that perfect Oasis somewhere near where I live.

The beauty of retreating is that you get to step out of the busy activity and hectic pace of your life and slow down to the rhythm of your soul, the pace your body can breath and feel relaxed in. The downside is that most retreat centres are far away. I envision a center close by, in a quiet neighbourhood, with a big sunny room for stretching the body in, and a comfortable sitting room for watching inspiring videos, and an office upstairs for me.

People with busy lives who can't leave the city (moms with small children for example), could get away for a mini-retreat of a few hours on a Sunday afternoon. Women who work could take an afternoon for themselves once a month, a kind of mini-sabbath or rest day.

Why I like the quote above from Beauty http://www.johnodonohue.com/ is that I have been listening to this inner calling for a while now (a long while) without being able to envision it as something concrete that could happen now. It remained in the realm of dream of the future, or someday it may happen. I did not believe enough, or it was not time for it, simply.

It's wonderful to feel things are moving towards realizing that dream, even if only by baby steps, spreading my wings, taking short flights over the terrain, asking the Creative Power for the strength and clarity to fulfill the vision, accepting my role as an individual responding to the call.

happy Monday,

jenn

Journalling the Journey

2010-02-05T12:39:00.001-05:00

So, without making a resolution for the new year (because I don't believe in them), I did silently decide to use my journal as a tool for self discovery more often and without sticking to a strict schedule, I have been making time to write every morning, for as long as I can.

The question (I wrote questing) I have been posing in my journal for the longest time is about where my passion lay, what project would ignite a fire in my heart and get me moving. I lead occasional retreats, I teach occasionally, I work on my own writing sporadically, but no one thing was calling me.

Then I began writing with the Writing down Your Soul book by Janet Conner, http://janetconner.wordpress.com and asking my higher self or Spirit, what do I love? What do I want to manifest (I know, I always ask this question and have written about it before, but it's been a long transition to acceptance)?

The answer is never far away, is it? Through journalling, and through some astrological help from my sister Sue, I did get some clarity. What I was resisting (and journalling about) was that this is a time for rest, for renewal, for getting in touch with the power of Presence, which is what I want to encourage in others. In other words, it has been a time of putting into practice what I preach. And my impatience to have a new project was preventing me from enjoying this beautiful present moment. I kept journalling about where I was headed, always looking into the future.

Transitions are always (or usually) uncomfortable. You close one door, then look for the other to open. Sometimes, as Joan Borysenko ( www.joanborysenko.com) put it in a workshop I attended, you stand in the hallway, in limbo, waiting for that other door to present itself.

Journalling is a way of promoting patience with the process, asking the questions, receiving guidance, and hopefully being present and compassionate with yourself until clarity comes. You know how it works when you've been waiting for a bus forever, and just when you are about to give up and find another way, the bus arrives? Or just when you think you're on the wrong road, this highway is going nowhere, a sign appears that your destination is near.

Journally for me has been a kind of navigational system, helping me link up with the satellite of higher intelligence within me. A higher wisdom does come through, will come through, if you keep asking the question and stay open. Listen for your dreams too, for they hold clues to your deeper awareness, what's going on beneath the surface life you are wading in.

Isn't it amazing that all this time, journal writing classes have been my part-time job, but I didn't consider it a major passion. But it has been reignited in me as a way to reach women, to provide a safe space and support for their own wisdom to unfold. And a way to teach the thing I need to learn the most. The thing I was looking for was right under my nose (isn't it always?)

nameste,
jenn