The Story Midwife

Happy Birthday Week to ME!

Trish, age three, Burt and Ernie birthday cake - made by Aunt Beth, my mother's sister.

__________________

Yep - it's birthday week!  Wahoo!  I love my birthday week and drink it all in with feisty joy.  I'm an Aquarius, born January 22, 1975.  For those of you who aren't math geniuses, that makes me 32 years old on Monday.

In our house, the birthday girl or boy gets the whole week. Richard and Sammy have sweetly gifted me with a present each morning before Sammy hops aboard the bus. Monday it was a recipe book (handcrafted by Sammy and Daddy with LOTS of tape) full of recibes for just one item: the mango lassi! Ooh, I love Indian food, in particular the traditional Indian mango drink. The boys got a whole pile of mangoes and accompanying ingredients and Sammy and I whipped them up for dinner on Monday night. Tuesday I got a new orange (favorite color) folding toothbrush. Today it was the new Stephanie Plum mystery by Janet Evocovich, Twelve Sharp. (I'm a sucker for a quirky murder mystery, and Stephanie Plum takes the cake. No pun intended...) Last night Sammy took me out for pizza, and tonight we'll do something special, too. (Richard's at the Big City Church both nights.) This weekend friends are taking us out for pasta and the theater. I think it'll be a great birthday week for me.

This photo above of me at my 3rd birthday party is tender for me. Each time I really look at it - and into the eyes of my three-year-old self - I tear up. In the midst of preparing our house for sale, I recently re-discovered my baby book with photos from my early childhood. Many find me with a strained smile or no smile at all. Here though, at age three, I have a spontaneous smile - maybe even a precursor to a giggle? It 's both sad and heartwarming to see my/her face. I want to scoop her up as I have so often scooped up my son and ask her what she knows. To tickle her and snuggle with her and sing her to sleep. To love her like she's never been loved before.

Over the last several weeks, I've been exploring EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), an energy-based, self-healing method based on the meridians, as well as "mind training" methods that integrate prayer, meditation, EFT and hypnosis. As a contemplative who leans deeply into Buddhist Insight Meditation and treasures the journey of life (including the rich folds of the soul that darkness, sorrow, and grief lend), I am reluctant to try and am skeptical of ultra "light-based", instantaneous, "change-your-mind-and-change-your-life" recipes for success, happiness and manifestation. 

In his book Original Self, author, musician, psychotherapist, and former monk (now there's a combo I love!) Thomas Moore offers that when we are "chronically trying to be someone other than [our] original self, persuaded that we are not adequate and should fit some norm of health or correctness, we may find a cool distance gradually separating us from the deep and eternal person, that God-given personality, and we may forget both who we were and who we might be."

Three more quotes from Original Self:

   "The soul has its own set of rules; the events of the soul are cyclic and repetitive. Familiar themes come round and round. The past is more important than the future. The living and the dead have equal roles. Pleasures are deep, and pain can reach the very foundations of our existence."

   "The soul doesn't evolve or grow, it cycles and twists, repeats and reprises, echoing ancient themes common to all human beings. Its odyssey is a drifting at sea, a floating toward home, not an evolution toward perfection."

   "To be modern is to worship at the altar of health. We look forward to the day when we will be fully balanced and adjusted. We believe we will have arrived there when trouble vanishes and we feel chronically carefree... Behind this attitude lies a salvational fantasy... Once in a group discussion James Hillman was celebrating the soul's pathologies. I supported his stance by saying how important it is to safeguard our symptoms. A man in the group came up to me afterward and said, 'Did I hear you right? Did you speak in favor of preserving our symptoms? How could a therapist, of all people, make such an odd remark?'
   Our neuroses are the raw material out of which an interesting personality may be crafted. They are sometimes dangerous and debilitating but nonetheless valuable...
   Not wallowing in our limitations by creatively dealing with them as resources for a vital life - the prima materia of the alchemists - we arrive not at shallow self-acceptance but at profound love of the soul, which, with its rich mixture of the good and the bad, is the starting point of a creative life."

Whew - this is the sort of stuff that makes my mystic soul come alive! It's also very much in tune with my experience of breath-centered meditation. And, to me anyway, it seems that the hypes of EFT, positive affirmations, and hypnotherapy blatantly contradict this more soul-nurturance view. A 'salvational fantasy', if you will. Yet there are many individuals dear to me that claim the personal and life-altering power of these tools and methods. The movie The Secret is big news in many spiritual circles, as are books by Esther and Jerry Hicks, which contain messages on the laws of abundance and attraction brought forth by the entity Abraham, whom they channel.

As much as the contemplative in me may initially bristle at this sort of language, it has been my experience that where I place my thoughts my attention follows. And I love my readings in the intersection of faith and science, of quantum physics and faith/theology/spirituality, which is at play in EFT, affirmation work, The Secret, and other "mind tools". AND I'm also a Big Fan of the incredibly rich diversity of God.

So - what do I do with all this that initally feels like discord? I'm sitting with it. Exploring it. Opening my mind to the ways these seemingly different world/spirituality views might find stands of similarity, even compatability.

How, you may be begging to know, does this relate to my birthday week? I often find myself claiming themes rather than resolutions for a year, and as my birthday is so close to the new year it is often the marker for such thematic turns around the sun. Lately I feel a rumbling in my belly as I relate to my past. This is not new, and Lord knows I've done a shit load of inner work, therapy, journaling and spiritual direction as I bring healing and peace to my Story. But as my son ages, it becomes more important to me to live "cleanly" from my Story. I'm not sure what I mean by that, exactly. Just that I don't want to bring all the tangles from my family of origin into so many of my encounters with my son. I'm sensing that all of the above - from Thomas Moore to EFT to affirmative mantras - have pieces to contribute to a new layer of healing might occur in my life. Thus, we have a theme for Birthday Year 32. (Incidentally, in numerology the number 32 is broken down to the number 5. Here's what one resource says about the energies of 5. Right in line with child-hearted-ness, I think!)

This is a long post, I know. And full of diverse ideas and thoughts and explorations. If you've stuck with me this far, I'd love to know your thoughts on this. I know some of you personally, and know that you are mystic-contemplative minded folks. How do you integrate (or not) some of these ideas? If you feel yourself more in-line with positive visualization, the laws of attraction and abundance, and other new thought modalities, what do you think of Thomas Moore's assertions? You Buddhists, too - what's your take? I'm interested in creative dialogue here, so be real and be kind.

Okay. I'm off to slather on another coat of paint on some doors on my second floor. When will we ever be done with this house tending so we can get this baby on the market? 

Hmmmm.... Maybe I can harness this law of attraction.  I'm visualizing it now.... The doors are painted, the clutter is gone, the floors are so shiny I can see my face in them... The plumber is on his way to install the new shower... I can see the sale coming...

:-)

Equinox Pizza

Here's what our family did last night to mark the coming of Autumn:

"What is it?", you may ask.

Well, it's Autumn Equinox Pizza, of course!

The brilliant idea came to me yesterday afternoon as a way to illustrate  the equinox for Sammy. It's not exactly a circle, for I rarely do anything geometrically correct. But you get the idea. The white side represents the light and the season of summer. It's loaded up with Alfredo sauce, shredded chicken, and mozzarella cheese. The yellow side represents the darkness and the season of winter. It's home to red pizza sauce, pepperoni, and colby-jack cheese. Sammy totally got it. And thought it was the best pizza he'd ever eaten. It was of course, since he helped make it.

Then we went out to build a bonfire and roast marshmallows to say thank you to Summer and welcome Autumn.

All in all a very luscious day.

How'd you celebrate/honor the day?

Grace for the Small Ones

AKA: My Squishing Heart

This won't be a long post.
It won't even be very descriptive.
For I am tired and it's the end of a very long week in our home and in my heart.

I've just put my son to bed. After book time we got to spend a luscious half-hour talking and lying in silence while I rubbed his outdoorsy, child-sweat-scented skin.

I wonder: How do people do it?  Have kids, I mean, and send them off to school?  We've put Mr. Sammy on the bus 20 days in a row now. And it's changing him in ways that are utterly heart wrenching.  I'm not kidding.  It's squeezing my heart and squishing it in ways I didn't know could happen.

This is turning out to be one of the most painful aspects of parenting I've encountered so far.  It's not like the colic that we endured together when the Sambo was just a wee little one.  (The colic that started when he was about two minutes old, mind you, and lasted so long I was on the brink of begging to be medicated and locked up.) It's not like the absolutely horrible extreme unholy, god-forsaken lack of sleep that we endured together until the boy was two years old.  (Okay, I'm a mystic.  I think everything's holy and has it's place in the shaping of the soul's landscape.  But I didn't like it and it wasn't the most healthy period in my life.) It's not like the challenges that arose within and shifted every single relationship I was in (marriage, parents and parents-in-law, friendships).  It's not exactly worse than any or all of these.  It's not better.  It's just really, spinningly different. And I'm at a loss.

Starting this week we get a weekly progress report from the teacher. (Who, by the standards of the public school system and that whole institution, is an EXCELLENT teacher, by the way. She's a GREAT communicator and I think she wants very much for her students to learn and thrive and (gulp) excel.) The report comes home in his school-to-home and home-to-school folder. Sammy has been "having trouble" sharing at center time and sitting still at carpet time when they have their "morning meetings".  He has difficulty keeping his hands and feet to himself and doesn't use the proper hand signals to indicate when he has something to share with the teacher or class.  Apparently he's walking around saying "O crap" "over and over and over."  On the positive side, though, he's learning to read their daily schedule, so at least he's got that going for him. 

As parents Richard and I are to talk with Sammy about these issues and sign the paper and return it to school. I did talk with him.  We sat together on the hundred-year-old hardwood floor of our dining room.  He was surprised to hear that the teacher thought he had trouble sharing at centers.  He thought he "was being really nice, Mama!" When I asked him about sitting at the carpet he pleadingly said, "But Mama, it's because I forget that sitting like this (demonstrates a sitting position similar to hero pose) isn't good for my legs." He's shared before that the "proper" way to sit is "criss-cross-applesauce," like this. When we talked about keeping his hands and feet to himself he said, "Yeah" and looked downward like this was not a new conversation.  He also said he kept forgetting to fold his hands in his lap.

When I asked Sammy if he knew what "crap" means (since it's not a word we use in our home -- well, at least in front of him), he said no, he did not know. I told him it meant "poop" and he was a little embarrassed and agreed that it wasn't too kind. I imagine no one had told him -- he was just told not to say it.

In addition, Sammy brings home homework a few nights a week with an extra dose for those weekends when there are two days in a row when he doesn't have school.

Then there's the bus fiasco delayed the route for 25 minutes yesterday.

Tonight in bed we talked about the new alternative recess that is being offered. He knows that the next time his class will participate in alternative recess there will be peer role models that help lead it. He said quietly, "I hope I get to be one." I asked him what a role model was. He told me quite plainly, "They're the good people." 

I could go on and on into the depths of what this calls up for me. I might go of on a tirade about how the frickin' culture we live in makes it nearly impossible for creative, artistic souls to emerge. How even the best of the public schools in our country are grooming all their little people to be cookie-cutters of each other. How at AGE FIVE we're teaching our children to be the "good people".  (Tell me, then, about those who aren't the "good ones?" What, pray tell, are we doing about them???) I could share how I'm scared my son will go underground in attempt to be one of the "good ones" and what will arise instead is the conditioned little person that has been socialized to fit in. I could tell you how freaked out that possibility makes me. We could take a walk down memory lane and look at my own childhood challenges with school and learning in so-called non-traditional ways and how I still tire at being "too big" and "too much" for the general population to "get". And in later posts perhaps I will.

But for tonight I simply wanted to check in and share my heart. To give you a glimpse of where I am in my own process with this.

Tomorrow morning we will go hiking at Backbone State Park, our favorite.  Then we'll drive to a pizza-and-
a-movie place in Waukon to take in Ice Age 2.  I hope he has the best weekend ever.

Okay, so it was a little more descriptive than I thought.

Do you have stories?  Words of encouragement?  Thoughts, reflections, well-paying job offers near a Waldorf school? I am ever so hungry to hear them.

Deep sighs within,
and deep bows of purest compassion to all the children of the world,
The Story Midwife

First Day of Kindergarten

Well, kids. It's time for Kindergarten.

EGAD!  I can hardly believe my little boy is a school-ager now.  Today is the first day of school in our school district.  While grades 1-12 start back with a full day, the wee ones of the district have a bit of a gentler entry.  Today Richard, Sammy and I will trek out to the school for a 20 minute visit with Sammy's new teacher.  We'll find his coat hook, cubby, and desk.  We'll explore the halls a bit more, find the bathrooms, and get a greater feel for the place. 

Sammy's pumped.  I just overheard him tell Richard, "Dad, I think it's about time for me to get on the bus."  Though we've had the conversation multiple times that today is NOT the first school bus day, he's not quite ready to relinquish the dream that his bus just might pull up to the front door and welcome him up the steps.  It's very sweet.

How is Mama?  Well, Mama's nervous.  We had so hoped that he would be attending a Waldorf school.  Trouble is, there is only one in Iowa and it happens to be 1.5 hours away.  Not gonna happen.  I've rolled around and around in my head and my heart on if public school is where I want my boy to go.  It was just a few weeks ago that Richard and I officially decided NOT to home-school him.  For now, that is. 

Several months ago one of my clients told me the story of an African woman who was born, raised, and initiated into her African village.  Originating in that sort of community I would expect that such a woman would admonish us Americans for lack of community and multi-generational guidance in our children's lives.  Nope.  Rather she said that in America we are so afraid to let our children go.  We hold on. We have a hard time releasing.  "Let them go!", she says. 

This story struck me.  I AM frightened to release my son to the world.  (And for good reason, I think.)  What would happen if I trusted him. Trusted myself. Trusted our family.  Xeborah reminded me that we are family that buries placentas, for goodness sake, and he won't forget that when he goes off to school. 

I'm finding this to be one true thing about Motherhood:  It is an ever unfolding dance of RELEASE.

So today I release my son into his own 5-year old fullness. I will trust him, trust our family, trust the universe as his world expands, and as he makes his way in the world just a little bit more.

Yay for you, Sammy. 

Happy Solstice

 

Welp.

Today's the Summer Solstice.

For awhile now it's been important to me to celebrate earthy-based seasons such as this in our home.  For instance, at the Winter Solstice we celebrate with a yearly Dark Party, where we invite friends to come dressed in black and bring dark foods and a candle. After we much on the Edgar Allen Bean Dip and Fear Not the Valley of the Fudge and sip on the blackest red wine in town we gather in a circle. We invite the stories from the last year to unfold. People share poetry, songs, dances. They reveal where darkness has lived in their lives, and where they have or have not felt God's presence in the midst of that. At the end of the evening, those in the circle are invited to light their candle - signifying that God's holy light shines even in the midst of our darkest stores, or to leave their candle wick dark - signifying the barrenness and longing for God we can experience in that darkness. Either choice is okay. Either choice is honored.

The Winter Solstice is my absolute favorite day of the whole year.  Just thinking about it right now makes my tummy dance with expectancy. It's the day I feel most alive. I've written several songs in honor of this darkest day. The Winter Solstice and its accompanying Dark Party has been such a powerful ritual for us and for our circle of friends that my husband and I even made a whole CD about it all: Behold

Today is the Summer Solstice, the earth's and sun's opposite expressions of my favorite day.  I am decidedly less drawn to its energy.  I wonder why. It's not that I dislike light. Perhaps it is simply that I have known Great Darkness in my life. Seasons of no-light, isolation, and terror were many in my childhood and early years. No one ever acknowledged - much less honored - these seasons for me.  Darkness has gotten such a bad wrap in our culture. We'll do almost anything to not feel sad, lonely, confused. But what if those seasons hold great wisdom? What if their very presence makes way for the resurrection of light?  Understanding and participating in earth-based and pagan experiences of spirituality has been part of the journey of learning to open  w-i-d-e  the doors to honoring all my stories. And naming them holy.

The earth turns. The seasons shift. The soil freezes and thaws. So it is in our lives. Paying attention to these seasons can be a lovely mirroring spiritual practice for the interior experience.

Tonight you'll find us in our backyard with a big bonfire celebrating the generosity of the sun and "boosting" its energy. (That is if the current torrential downpour doesn't persist.) Fiery, bright foods will grace our meal. Together with a couple of friends from a nearby town we'll gather around the fire give thanks for the blessings in our lives, for the abundance within and around.

As for me - I want to dedicate this coming season to honoring all the places, relationships, and expressions in my life that are gloriously light-filled. And I want to drink it in.

So let's raise a toast to the sun's incredible generosity, for the abundance that lives in every cell of every being. Lift high your glass of sun-colored orange juice and drink to the light within.

Here, here!

The Placenta and the Snake

On the day following my last post, Sammy's fifth birthday, Sammy and our neighbor Ev, Sammy's 74-year-old best friend, found a dead snake near our home. A birthday snake! I LOVED this! Sammy did too and decided to take the snake for "sharing time" at his preschool the next day. They never know what he'll bring in the door for sharing time. A stellar week of sharing items from Sammy might look like this:

• Day one: Horse-hair nest
• Day two: Tiny cocktail umbrella with the narration that "it's just so cute!"
• Day three: "Lightening Drum" that Sammy and Daddy made out of 2x6 boards and clear packing tape
• Day four: His "walking stick" -- a mini-blind turner wand that fell off the mini-blinds
• Day five: Dead snake in a zip-lock bag

He's very multi-dimensional -- what can I say?

Over our backyard dinner of roasted hot dogs and s'mores, Richard and I chatted with Sammy about how cool it was that he found a dead snake on his birthday. That some Native Americans believe Snake comes at a time with lots of change. Shedding skin, new skin, and thoughts of kindergarden filled our conversation for a bit before heading in for bath time and bedtime.

I knew I wanted to bury my placenta that night after I tucked Sammy into bed. I'd pulled it out of the freezer that morning and had dug the hole in the afternoon. At points in the day I felt like I was preparing to bury a girl-child -- a daughter I had once delivered but that had not survived. Then the feeling would turn and it seemed as though I would be burying my womb. Very disorienting and surreal.

Once Sammy was all tucked in I returned to Placenta Cove in the ancient lilacs to find the next-door landlord mowing the grass. He'd have had a perfect view of me and my placenta. Um, no thanks. The town of Strawberry Point is already talking...

Xeborah called. Goddessy friend of shamanism and symbol, and a spiritual director herself, we agreed that Sammy's snake was a very cool gift to him, and that this placenta was very girl-like. I came to see that burying this organ from my body did represent burying the potential to bring a girl-child into the world through my womb. While lately I've been longing to again birth, nurse, and mother a child of my own flesh I'm about 96% sure I don't really want to have another baby. Guess that 4% of longing was talking pretty loudly.

After Xeborah and I hung up I meandered outside with a few simple items. I didn't put much thought into the ritual. Much of my job is centered on ritual -- making it and performing it and guiding others to it -- and I have such a passion for ritual; I thought I might make a bigger deal out of it. But instead of planning each detail I simply responded in the moment to what called to me.

On the way to the placenta site I picked a large, pink peony and a shasta daisy from their respective flower patches. Once by the hole, I lit a candle that a little girl made for me at a family retreat Richard and I led in the spring. With an Indian brass bell that is my maternal grandmother's I rang away all that was not needed and called in all that was. I brought the peony to my face, smelling its fragrance and saying goodbye. It went first into the hole, then the placenta and blood plopped in after it. I expected to encounter the stench of old flesh and was prepared to be repulsed. Instead there was just the metallic odor of blood. Not offensive to me at all. Sort of comforting and earthy, actually, like the mother of all moon cycles.

It was so dark in my cove. I worked quickly and easily, not responding to great emotion, but rather moving as a woman doing what she is called to do. I placed the dirt over the placenta, packing it down with my feet, giving thanks while taking deep breaths and ringing the bell. When the soil was hard and I was certain my husband would agree that no neighborhood coyotes could come to snatch it up, I kneeled down to pat the dirt with my hands. My fingers found a few sticks which I instinctively moved to outline the circular hole. At last, I placed the daisy in the small mound of earth. I bowed in reverence, rang the bell one last time, gathered up my belongings and headed inside.

It was simple.  It was beautiful.  It was marking an era.

The next day Sammy asked me to bury his snake next to the placenta.

I did.

You ponder the symbology.