My heart is healing in the most unexpected way.. and now it is the only way that i can imagine finding healing.

I've always been more at home in other cultures.
Somehow, I found everything i missed about the world of the comox valley and waldorf reverence and festival life, a deeper understanding of the people i know who live here, and a definite intense remembrance of the first place i fell for, Japan.

So after connecting with my own history - German. And accepting that I am Canadian, after all, my childhood was full of farms and lakes and being tucked in with parashut blankets. It was snow and maple syrup forests. It was friends, the best and only i would ever want. It was good and sweet - (until i grew up and was hit with the loss of what i thought it all would be) and so, yes. The land I loved, the people I loved, my mother and father and sister and brother and grandpa and grandma and cousins and aunties and uncles, and parents friends. All of my firsts in life and much of what grounds me to myself, happened between the two oceans. In a place called, Canada - although it has so many other names.

Still, something burst open and I belonged. Once again, in a place where I was a visitor - where I do not know the language or the dances. Where I have not eater what they have eaten or been where they have been. Where I do not even know where to sit or how to speak.

I belong.

Where I only have new aquaintances. 
Where I sit with sorrow and feel content.
Where the sounds made are the screams that I identify with 
and though I do not know the story I feel it's truth.

I am deeply grateful (forever and always) to the Fort Rupert Band and all the Families that welcomed me to their Potlatch, this weekend Oct 12-13 2018

It hit me like never before, that this transporting by drummers and dancers and artists and storytellers - was unwanted, interrupted, and forbidden. The treasures taken and the people completely overlooked, imprisoned, misrepresented, and unseen.

this weekend, i heard the very songs that were silenced. that is not lost on me and i can barely keep the tears away as i type this.

i love this photo. Where the light floods in and through the very heart of the totem giving the eagle or firebird the gentle touch of being seen and calling it to fly again.

Forty by Forty

It hasn't happened yet, i am still a few months away.
I thought I would be old at 40. I think because while I was a child, my mother was in her thirties and so a Parent to a child was Old.
Then I met a whole bunch of incredible woman who truly made me see 40 as the new 20.
By this I mean, rather than looking back at all that they had lived - they were LIVING - and more so, had as much to look forward to as one who had just left home - bags packed & full of dreams.

Maybe it was because they had found Vancouver Island, which if you spend too much time living in, too many walks in the Mountains and too many mornings by the rolling waves of the blue wild ocean, you too begin to dream again and somehow travel backwards into all that the world still thinks is kept for youth.

It is not so. The Soul restless or quiet, is timeless and true.

Yet still, 40 means something. It is no longer a time to have a house - a child or a few- a career for life. It is a time to stand on my own two feet, with my head held steady and a warm gentle knowing look in my eyes.

It is a time to begin to live out of my heart.
To listen to all the things I've always wanted to do. Even if I am the only one who knows or sees these things. There is always the Moon that knows at least a little, when I open my window or run outside and spread my arms wide under her glow!

So what is my list.
Well, most of it is my own, because I am finally learning to wait to share the wishes and wonders, because the pressure closes in too fast and the desperation that I will let the whole world down crashes against me once again.

But, I'll tell you that it's just (shrug) really little things. Things like Less is Less. And Who is Really on your Mind and in Your Heart. And saying Goodbye's and Making Room for the New. * Even while I barely believe that there will be a new to welcome. It is keeping and losing and resting and finding.

Right now,

It is this:

#1   I will have 40 items of Clothing in my closet by the morning of my fortieth Birthday.

*Almost every item of clothing I have kept - is because it lets me touch yesterday and hold onto who I once was forever. I always dress for the world I live in. Every place I have lived has clothed me.

Who am I now. 
I am only sure when I am naked.

With my dinosaur onesie coming fairly close :)  but it's feet are warn and it's softness is gone. And while I think of the velveteen rabbits conversation with the horse, and remember that when most of you is worn away you are finally real. (sigh) It will one day be on my list of letting go.

I have 4 months to go.

Cross your fingers for me.
Whatever the heck it's gonna bring up may hurt like hell - there is a reason, the clothes have been going round and round my laundry cycle for years. unseen. unworn. but here.

If buying something new, makes me feel like I will live forever.
Admitting that it's only clothing, may make me face the fact that I am only skin and bones and flesh.
(and YES so much more!) but still. Letting go has more to do with dying then living.. you get there -but only after walking through the empty places with the shock of all that's gone.

I wouldn't be able to handle my thoughts and get through a day, except that all this over thinking passion and sensitivity makes me an interesting writer, maybe, well, i like me - even if the answer is no.

I'm scared and sad and wonderfully okay.
Writing is my most favouritist thing.