Gifts from the Universe

“The moment you touch your soul, you become fearless." -Yogi Bhajan

This past summer and early fall, I gave myself the space I needed to get in touch with my soul.  I found there a fire burning so bright and asking me to change my whole life to feed it.  I made some significant changes.  I went from homeschooling to working mother.  That was the biggest.  I decided to move on the grid.  I'm packing today.  I began teaching yoga, and I applied for and received a grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women to finish an essay collection I'm working on concerning events in my own life as a rural mountain woman. I feel the essays will illustrate the universal experience of being a woman.  My 3 year old goes to a babysitter 3 days a week now.  Between yoga work, driving, and my work as public affairs director at WMMT, I'm doing this thing 50-60 hours a week.

Another gift I gave myself during this time, was to be honest with me.  I searched my heart and let myself be free to experience things my heart longed to experience.  We don't have this freedom all the time, and when we do it is intoxicating.  I'm 37, so maybe what I experienced some would call a mid-life crisis.  I'll be a lucky person to get another 37 years, so maybe it is.  For me, it held real meaning.  For the first time in a long time, I gained the feeling that there was something to hope for, not just for my daughters, but for myself.  I felt like I woke up and had decided to come out of the shadows to live.

It is true that when you touch your soul you become fearless.  This picture on the left is just moments after I gave birth to my third daughter at home.  You can see a little of the blood on my arms and my baby.  She was so healthy and strong.  She was born with such a force that it caused me to bleed a little more than normal.  It wasn't anything that couldn't be handled well at home.

However, there were some moments for those who were attending to my needs that became frantic.  What I was experiencing while they were assessing my bleeding and getting it under control was bliss.  My body grew warm and fuzzy.  My ego retreated.  I felt whole.  I didn't care if I continued on in life in the physcial body.  I felt like I was completed.  It is very hard to describe, but I haven't felt anything as good before or since.  What makes it even stranger to talk about is, if I hadn't been tended to.  If I had been alone to care for myself, I likely would have bled too much and passed on.  In the moment where the veil between worlds grew very thin for me, I felt most at peace.  That makes people uncomfortable.  That makes it hard to share because there aren't many who understand.

This summer, I began finding a way to live and recreate those feelings of letting go completely.  It isn't as easy to replicate in life as it is when your body actually is letting go of its life blood.  Life is complicated.  I'm a realist.  I fought to keep that energy going, but it became just embers and I've had to accept that for now.  I couldn't control the death of it and I've taken that in a hard way.  I've sunk into a dark and grieving place.  I'm not a crier.  I've been crying a lot lately.  The hope I built has been put away.  I'd say it is gone, but there's always the possibility she will return.  She stayed in Pandora's box after all.  I just have to not wish for her anymore.  I find myself thinking more and more about those moments.  "Kelli, stay with me," she said.  I thought, why?  I decided I didn't care to stay and if it was meant that I go, I'd let it happen.  "Just a minute," I said.  Another minute in complete surrender.  I long to go back there.  I'd happily go back there unafraid.  

This week was a rough week.  Yes, I know.  I should be immensely grateful.  You know what?  Don't say that to me - ever.  I am immensely grateful.  My baby sister texted me today - You're at the height of your game right now.  Yes, you may be sick, but you will be fixed and start to feel better.  I really believe that.  You're going to be living in an awesome new house.  You have the best babies money could buy. LOL.
She's completely right.  I'm glad to have her encouragement.  I'm grateful and blessed by all those things.  It is what is keeping me going.  If I hadn't taken those steps for myself, I don't think I'd be coping as well as I am.  I absolutely LOVE my job and the people I work with.  Yoga saves my life every day.  No, dark places and sad feelings do not come from a lack of gratitude.  People are wrong there and it is offensive.  Greed is the opposite of gratitude.

I was fighting tears Monday while driving the girls out of the holler.  Right as we were going into the creek, I noticed what appeared to be an old weathered bone on the flat rocks in the shallow part of the creek.  I collect bones, skulls, and other natural oddities, and I stopped to get a better look.  I opened the car door and discovered this very heavy statue.  It's been either buried or in the water a long time.  It was painted at least twice.  Once red and once black.  It had also been mounted to something.  Maybe a fence, entry way, or gate.  It looks like it is holding a staff or spear.  A resting warrior.  The Universe had sent me a gift with no explanation of how it made it there on that day for me to find.  Universe told me to rest.  To be patient.  It's ok.

I continued on.  It's been a week of migraines and drastic mood swings.  These are all associated with Hashimoto's. (Side note: Those of us who have the disease get accused of being dramatic.  Please, don't be so insensitive to assume you know what someone else is feeling without having experienced it yourself.  Be compassionate if someone seems to feel out of sorts.  Even if they are being dramatic, they need comfort.  It's a cry for help and relief. )  My stomach is in knots a lot lately too, which I will probably write about in another post.  It's interesting.  I'm working on something good in regards to that.  Because of those things, I'm not sleeping.  1-5 hours at most a night.  It's hard to stay on an even keel being so tired.  I kept going further down in the dump.

Then, I get word from the artist Bonita Parsons that someone who wished to remain anonymous had bought this piece of art from her and asked her to send it to me!  I adore this piece and when I found out I cried.  I feel so unworthy of such a gift.  I socialize very little.  I don't talk on the phone even with family and friends I want to talk to.  I forget to answer some messages I get on Facebook.  Very few people really know me.  I am as a ghost and very alone.  I have no idea why someone was compelled to gift me this.  It makes me feel very thankful and at the same time sad.  When I write about my own life, I write it honest.  It isn't a bad kind of sad, but it is a type of sad.  I've cried several times over the receipt of this gift.  I simply don't feel worthy of it and would like to understand why it was given me.

The Universe has gifted me twice in a week when I just wanted to completely give up.  I don't want to stoke the embers.  I want a lobotomy.  Yet, Universe is telling me that my life is a gift.  Don't squander it.  It is ok to be sad, but it isn't ok to take yourself away from the collective before it is your time to go, whether you do it metaphorically or physically.  

If you have a crow as a totem, you need to be willing to walk your talk and speak your truth. You must put aside your fear of being a voice in the wilderness and "caw" the shots as you see them. Crow is an omen of change. If he keeps appearing to you he may be telling you that you have a powerful voice when addressing issues that you do not quite understand or feel that they are out of balance.
Crows are the bringer of messages from the spirit world, and is thought to dwell beyond the realm of time and space.
When you meet crow, he could be telling you that there will be changes in your life and that possibly you should step by the usual way you view reality and look into the inner realms …walk your talk…be prepared to let go of your old thinking and embrace a new way of viewing yourself and the world.

I discovered with certainty this summer that my totem animal is the crow.  Crow medicine and those who carry crow as a totem can be intense.  It's true.  It's not a thing we can help and it comes to use by nature.  Crow crosses the veil of existence on the regular and is thought to live outside of time and space.  Crow carries an honest message and doesn't care to deliver it.  Crow is lonely, a loner, but never without work.  Crow has magic.  People come to us in private to hear their secrets.  It's kind of like what I imagine a priest in the confessional to feel, except we don't absolve or give penance.  We acknowledge, accept, and help the processing begin as best we can while still being what we are.
 
I had a dream this week.  A woman with a clipboard met me at a convention and said, "You've been idealized."  I got so mad at her I could have hit her.  I turned around and went back to the room I had just left instead of entering the convention.  I've been worried about what she means.  I hope that isn't true of me, and yet, when I receive anonymous gifts, or am told I inspire.  It is hard to swallow.  I'm struggling with my inner light.  I'm just living life as best I can right now.  Nothing I'm doing is special or beyond what any other human is capable of.  I've been called by some younger women a "hero."  That makes me very uncomfortable.  I don't understand where it comes from, or what I'm supposed to do with that fact.  It's hard.

This week though, Universe told me I have a job.  My job as the holder of crow medicine will include these things and it will include them whether I am experiencing the light or the deepest darkness.  I hear the crows cawing as I'm writing this now.  I can't not accept it.  It's what I am.  My heart won't let me say, no, as long as I am living.  It's just that I don't feel that character in me.  That sage hermit woman in the woods who holds the secret the adventurer hopes to find.  I've not gotten the ability to fully stand in my own light.  Maybe I never will.  How can I be anything to others?  How can I do what I'm asked while at the same time feeling I have no outlet for it myself?  Words though powerful are never enough and that is all I have.  Typed or written words.