A Pilgrimage Through Medical Purgatory

I am having massive resistance to writing about my hospital trip two weeks ago.  Partially because going back there in my mind is like making a voluntary trip to the tepid halls of purgatory.  A place of neither life nor death.  Just white walls and a large, dirty window revealing a capricious slice of spring sky.  A bed of thin foam coated in thick plastic, dressed with stiff, unfriendly sheets.  Tubes and needles dripping into open veins.  A panoply of nurses with varying attitudes and levels of tolerance and kindness.  At the time it was tolerable.  In retrospect, the impressions are bitter.  

But it was a distinct pivot in the story of my Life, which is what I am here to tell.  And even if I must endure the reliving of feelings I’d rather leave behind me, I feel that I must show up in service of this haunted recounting.  

Two weeks ago friday, I got this intense, debilitating stomach ache.  It started right after lunch… and in retrospect, I think it was the expired goat cheese I spread on my whole grain rye toast.  But that didn’t occur to me until way retrospect.  In the moment, all I knew was constant, unbearable pain that lasted all night.  (It aroused memories of a year and a half ago, when my colon was blocked and I spent four days in torturous pain before I finally braved pilgrimage to the hospital and had a chunk of my colon sliced out.)  In the morning, fielding the kids’ needs was a hellish romp on an open nerve.  I could barely move, let alone hold space for Forest’s fiercely autonomous need to actively participate in every step of making his “chocolate latte”.  Nor could I endure the ensuing tantrum when I did it myself so that I could melt back into bed and return to the dark meditation of my physical suffering.  

I considered going to the hospital… but instead opted to send the kids downstairs to Nonna, solicit some veggie broth from her and rest, after a near sleepless night.  God, yeah I hate telling this story.  Living it once was more than enough.  I drifted in and out of sleep until 1pm and then at my ex-nurse friend’s guidance, opted to hitch a ride to the Perugia hospital.   (A different hospital than the one where they had previously cut me apart, as I am still healing residual trauma from that experience.)  

No.  I can’t even write about this.  All I will say is that they admitted me.  Gave me a deep enema.  Did an xray and some blood tests.  Kept me for two nights.  And even though my overall impression is a haunting one, I DID appreciate the retreat.  The clean white walls and mostly empty space was a profoundly welcome contrast to the endless clutter of toys, self-propagating messes, dark, perpetually dingy tile floors and shadow strewn scapes of home.  The sprawling uneventfulness and zen ambiance was a divinely appointed reset.  My overnight hospital trips always feel like vision quests.  This time the only thing they fed me was sugary “cafe d’orzo” and bottled water.  So it was also a supported fast, which at first I fought… but eventually embraced.  Though my belly still felt tender to the touch, my hunger was menacing.  

I lamented that I had brought nothing to read…. So I opted to listen to Autobiography of a Yogi read aloud on youtube.  It had been nearly twenty years since I read the book.  I was hungry for spiritual sustenance.  Even if my body was starving, my soul did not go without.  I let it take me deep.

Another noteworthy detail is that Serena took an active stance to stay with Giordano and Forest while I was away.  This surprised me a bit… as from my perspective, she doesn’t get the highest quality attention in that arrangement.  But I guess she craves inclusion in a family structure.  And that is the only option on her menu at this time.  Forest has a father and a nonna, and a satelite network of semi-shady yet wholly loving characters.  Her heart longs for the same.  So at her fervent request, I asked G if he would keep Serena as well as Forest.  He was caught off-guard and resisted at first, but in time, he warmed up and agreed.  

She spent the days with Forest, Leone (G’s 10 year old son), Gemma (a 4 year old cousin whose birthday is the day before hers) and a peanut gallery of wacky adult characters.  The house she stayed in (in the nucleus of Assisi) was a polar combination of cigarette smoke and imperfect human love.  She seemed mostly happy, though I worry about the deep, complex world that swells and swirls from within her soul.  

On the morning after my second “sleep” (hardly to be considered a sleep) in the hospital, I was determined to leave.  I eagerly awaited the doctor’s morning round, so that I could get the lowdown and get the hell out!   He finally showed up around 10am.  I was surprised by his gently, elfin facial features, kind eyes and trendy upper ear piercing.  With a compassionate, steady gaze, he regaled the news that my condition was worsening and I “should” start chemotherapy immediately.  Naturally I panicked.  

Did the above words convey the actual experience of panic?  Because it’s not just a five letter word beginning with P.  It’s a deeply unsettled, heart racing, climbing the inner walls experience.  I reached out to trusted guides and allies to remember other, more resonant courses of thought, belief and action.  Slowly, over time, I returned to my personal groove of sanity.  

As much as others may tout the legitimacy of the conventional path….

IT IS NOT MINE.  

It’s just not.

But… I got a lot out of my pilgrimage to medical purgatory.  Namely that I must stop trying to be the Wonder Woman who heals herself while being a full time single mom, and GIVE IT ALL TO ME.  Now is my moment.  To “selfishly” stand for my Self and save my own life.  It’s better to let go of the primary responsibility for my kids for 3-6 months… and LIVE… Than to cling to a job I am honestly not capable of in this moment and kill myself and leave them forever.  

I know, I know, I’m making it sound so damn black and white.  A reduction of the wild, feminine chaos that is Life, to a few paltry sentences…. Totally ridiculous.  But suffice to say, I feel that my best shot at living through this is to cut loose all distractions from my daily commitment to healing and GIVE IT MY ALL.  I am taking some powerful medicines now.  And I am starting work with a practitioner of German New Medicine, who will help me dig to the root of my specific illness, so that I can resolve the inner conflicts once and for all.  Can our “tried and true” friend chemotherapy boast such fundamental integrity?  No!  Mainstream people imagine that merely killing off droves of their own devoted cells will save them… but they don’t look WITHIN, to the roots of illness still a-twist within their broken psyches.  

I’m confident that with God’s Grace, and my own whistling elbow grease, I will get through this trial.  The sheer and utter Miracle, is that my “village” is willing and ready to support this next phase.  Saint Rosa will keep Serena.  And Giordano and his illustrious mother will care for Forest.  And there will also be plenty of overlap, so the kids can be together.  And I will see them sometimes.  But not with the unbearable weight of full responsibility for their 24/7 care.  

As terrible as I have imagined Giordano to be….  I confess that he was “awake and ready”, as devotees of Yogananda affirm in the face of all that Life demands… When the rubber met the road, he was standing as solid as the volatile personality that he is, possibly can.  He said he would GIVE HIS LIFE for the children, and I felt him to the core.  Imperfect?  Fuck yes.  Devoted?  Totally.  And this must be enough.  It must be what I choose to focus on.  This is part of my healing.

Another difficult gift bestowed on me by this hospital pilgrimage, was the felt sense that my kids truly do NOT belong to me.  They really are God’s.  Yes, I was very blessed that they came through this body.  But the belief that they are “mine” is not helpful, let alone true.  Life is asking me to release them back to Her.  And to trust Her to care for them in the best way.  This is an epic surrender.  And certainly not easy.  But I see them happy with all of the loving beings who are showing up for them.  Especially Forest.  And, as I relax into this new arrangement, I see Serena mirroring the same surrender.  We have manifested our Village.  Too bad it took such dire measures!  But heck, I’m grateful nonetheless.  We are interwoven with a brilliant garland of souls, and I feel we are all lifting each other higher into the Light of our unique yet interdependent destinies.  Hallelujah!

The Aftermath of Forced Surrender

Lordy, there have been some excruciating moments arising from within me these days.  I mean if you put my situation “on paper”, it would be fully justified.  Single mom in the midst of healing cancer, in almost perpetual pain, and going through a separation from an abusive, loveless relationship in a foreign country.  To the eyes of the world, this scenario would incite pity.  To the eyes of the eternal soul, this would indicate a rich opportunity for awakening; a true return to the experience of Wholeness, Holiness.    

Though I manage to often retain the later perspective, I must confess that my ego often despises the decimating discomfort that I mostly live in.  Worse than the incessant hip pain, is the searing pain of loneliness and isolation.  These have been my life-long crucible… but these days seem to be their crescendo.  If only words could convey how deeply I ACHE to be held.  To be comforted and adored by a Great Force of Love.  Perhaps the Mother of ALL.  The Lover of ALL.  I often feel like I am trapped in an emotionally glacial echo chamber.  Crying out into an indifferent abyss.  

I believe that is the farthest thing from the Truth.  I know Life looooves me.  I see it manifest in so many ways, in so many moments… when I am just willing to open my inner eyes; unconditionally receive the Grace.  But sometimes I just can’t, because I am sucked down by an excruciating undertow of desperation.  A desperation that feels unquenchable.  I have harbored a hope that Life’s love for me would equate to an experience of being comfortable.  But I can’t seem to get comfortable… and hence I feel abandoned by the Mother of ALL.  But I am coming to accept that it is precisely the discomfort that is the Gift.  (YUCK!)  

And let me pause from my riveting narrative to say that I see others great souls on the periphery of my life mirroring similar sentiments of raw desperation.  Navigating life circumstances that are rendering them Undone.  Confused.  Helpless.  Not to mention global situations that are similarly rocking us as a Whole.  I sympathize… and simultaneously, this gives me faith in a larger and deeply intelligent movement.  These are symptoms of the creative destruction required to rebirth our world.  To bring about the great peace and harmony we seek.  The emergence of unity consciousness felt and lived by All.  

Now back to meeeee.  A couple of days ago, I was navigating a rogue wave of crushing desperation… Limping around, caring for the kids, who were demanding, quarreling, making messes…  all of their finest displays… And that feeling of WHERE ARE MY FRIENDS???  It felt so terrible and I saw no way out.  I dug deeeeep.  I felt myself in a “forced surrender”.  Like there was really NOTHING I could do… except accept.  This is my life.  I can either fight it and destroy myself… or humble myself like never before… fall to my knees and meet it in the way of sacred service.  Inverse my perspective… stop trying to “get” from Life… and learn to derive joy and fulfillment from GIVING to Life.  Not serving in the ways my ego wishes to serve.  But serving what is actually here and now.  With as much lightness in my heart as I can muster.  A lightness born of true acceptance.  

CAN I GET AN AMEN????

I’m wondering if this resonates for any of you “out there”…. Or am I just on a completely insane, kamikaze spiritual journey?  Some of you MUST understand… or my InnerMostBeing would not be ordering me to write these words.

To sum it up, I feel this slow-cooking process of dissolution of the false self.  Excruciatingly slow.  But profoundly valuable.  Like actually an answer to a prayer prayed many times over, perhaps in many lives.

Then, yesterday the Patron Saint Rosa (the babysitter of my kids, who has become family by now) took Forest all day and all night.  I felt soooo relaxed.  So relieved and quiet inside.  It’s a jagged paradox, because I LOVE BEING WITH FOREST.  He is a stunningly bright light.  A blazing ray of genius and love.  His innocence, intelligence, capability, creativity, innovation, articulate-ness and purity… are such a Gift to witness and foster.  And.  It is a full-throttle, non-stop ride.  

When Serena came home from school, I felt nourished and calm.  And she was her true, sweet, engaged self… as she often is when Forest is not around.  She was fully willing to do her homework with me. (This is not always the case!  Too often it is a colossal drama that destroys us both.) It was a nourishing bonding experience.  And then we watched a super fun animation movie on netflix.  “Vivo”; about this Cuban man who rescues a monkey and they make fabulous, joyful music together in the plaza until the man dies and the monkey makes a hero’s journey to Miami to deliver a heart-wrenching love song to his long-lost beloved who left Cuba to become a star… It was colorful and laden with uplifting latin beats.  Our orange tiger, Ra, lay on “memory foam island” with us, belly up, purring in sheer content.  

Too often I have heard myself lament, “WHERE IS THE SWEETNESS???”  Most days feel so brittle, so stark.  Even with the slow explosion of flowers and birdsong; the return of heat and light that is the resurrection of springtime.  But last night, sweetness rushed in like the welcome release of a touricate.  I felt palpably happy.  In a mellow streaming sunlight fashion.  Gentle.  Peaceful. Enlivened.  The aftermath of Forced Surrender.  

Even if I too often struggle to enjoy this alchemy of the soul… I TRUST IT. 

May this testimony inspire you to forever KEEP THE FAITH.  

Twisted Testimony, But the Unicorn Rides On…

I have not touched down here in Athena Graceland for the past month because my sudsy opera has descended to offensive new lows of low budget horror flick status.  I’m talking tomato juice blood and zombie extras done up with Maybeline eye shadow.  

Really, Athena?  

No, I’m just seeking a vein of humor in an otherwise deeply disturbing narrative.  Anyway, I think Maybeline eyeshadow would make for awesome zombies.  

I filed a police report against the soon-to-be “wasband” after he came home drunk at 2am, scared the crap out of Forest who coincidentally was making his way from the bedroom to find me  on Memory Foam Island, my go-to luxury destination in the living room.  Forest screamed in shock and began to cry.  My inner mama wolf’s fur bristled. She bared her fangs.  I had told him that if he ever came home drunk again, I would call the police.  Apparently he didn’t believe me…

Anyway, the situation escalated… from garden variety inebriated loud-mouth belligerence, to me searching the number of the police in my phone, to him climbing on top of me and wrestling it away from me, to him running outside with said phone, to me taking the Archangel Michael key out of the front door in an attempt to lock him out, to him busting through the door, to him climbing in bed with us with his sweet and sour beer breath, to me taking wide-eyed Forest (who was wide awake for all the sick and twisted action) to the bedroom where Serena lay in slumber, to him following us, climbing in bed, wrapping his arms around my rigid, trembling body, to me telling him firmly not to touch me, him having no regard for my boundaries (like always), me taking Forest and returning to the living room praying that Serena had remained asleep through the ugliness (which thank GOD she did), him following us and laying down and spewing a few final lines of inebriated nonsense, before passing out beside us.  His boozy breath billowing like a rancid, pre-spring breeze upon me.  

Though it was totally outside the comfy zone of my nature, the next day I went to the police and filed a report.  It took three hours.  By the end I was beyond empty, beyond raw.

I’m asking myself if this stuff needs to be committed to the internet… it feels scary… But I will put it in my book, because it is my life story.  It’s the only one I got.  And of course, I will aim to soar above it with a hawk’s spirit Vision in order to mine and share the Higher Wisdom available herein… But one thing is fo sho, it AIN’T goin on facebook!

After this episode, I told him I cannot live with him.  Did I mention previously that he had just inserted himself back into the house without any discussion, invitation, permission?  Yep.  Suddenly there was this troubled ghost man, lurking on the sofa.  Oh yes, I told you about the two thousand euro sofa!  Leaving breadcrumbs and dirty dishes, marinating on the couch binging on covid conspiracy videos while I limped around caring for the kids and cleaning up after him.  It was sickening.  

So I said please, either find another place to stay or I will.  Dial tone.  Zero regard for my needs.  (Shocking, I know 😉  Instead it was him waking up super nervous in the mornings, vomiting his unprocessed rage and fear all about the space, then disappearing for a long period.  My body shook for hours.  Then he would return later, wreaking of weed, sweet as pecan pie.  

In desperation, I asked everyone I knew if they knew of a house or apartment for rent in the area.  I even considered agritourismos (bed and breakfasts)  Nothing.  Apparently there are droves of people searching for homes now.  Thankfully, after a week or two of this dysfunctional dance, he FINALLY made himself a space downstairs, as was our original agreement.  But even that was too much for me.  You see, there is no kitchen or bathroom down there, so he was frequently upstairs, using “the facilities”.   

Then, by the Grace of God, one day about two weeks ago, he stopped coming home.  I guess he has been sleeping in Assisi, at the spacious “has-been nobility” family home of the mother of his elder son.  Finally, my nervous system could settle.  He has been mostly staying away.  

On March 17th, the five year anniversary of my beloved mama’s passing, was our court date for legal separation.  Wasband Dearest did not show up.  My lawyers said this was to our advantage.  I asked for full custody of Forest.  I felt (naively) cocky about easily receiving this hallowed boon.  Oh the release of imagining that G would finally have ZERO control over my life!  It was heavenly.  After all, he has been blocking me from getting Forest a passport and returning home to my beloved California… even for a VISIT.  

This is a man who, if it was up to him, would have left me to die back in October of 2020… For four days, I was in excruciating pain.  All I could do was lay in the fetal position on the floor… while he left me alone with the kids and went off to work.  When I told him two mornings in a row that I thought I needed to go to the hospital… he berated me, got out of bed and went back to sleep on the two thousand euro sofa!  On day four, my friends Rachel and Guido took me to the hospital, and the surgeons said WHY DID YOU WAIT SO LONG, YOU ALMOST DIED.

That kind of man deserves ZERO control over my life.

I hope the judge agrees.  

But she was a bit of a patriarchal prude.  Even though my lawyers testified that I would have support from my family back home, the judge said she was concerned that if I went back to the US with full custody and became sicker, Forest would be without his father.  But even as I type this twisted testimony, she is drinking in all of the succulent evidence, and will make her verdict within a month.  

I am still hopeful.  (Like on my knees PRAYING, hopeful.) I ache to go home.  And I know that my Mama is the head of the Angel Gang, gettin all up in Mrs. Judgy’s grill, persuading her to open the Golden Gate for me and my kids.

Of course, as the judge stated, it IS a complex situation… And it breaks my heart to think of taking Forest away from his poppy…  Even if he is on a path of self-destruction.  Even though he barely shows up on the day to day for Forest.  Still, there is “love” between them.  Although, one must ask how a man who does not love himself can possibly love another….  This is the sound of one hand clapping, I guess.

So that’s the heavy handed drama I’ve been living.  

Now on to the spiritual metabolization of it all.

What really eats away at me, is that Giordano seems to have a split personality.  Sometimes he is a straight up demon… and other times, an angel.  It makes my head spin.  When he is sweet and kind, I start to second, third and sixty-ninth guess myself.  Like was I over-reacting???  Was I hallucinating???  And then he’s terrible again and I release an exhale of relief, like no, I’m not crazy or a total fucking bitch for taking strong action.  Rinse.  Repeat.

This cycle is deteriorating my wellbeing and I want to be as far away from it as the dark side of the moon.

AND YET.  Here is my crucible… I want to carry no trace of darkness in my own heart.  I want only to walk in love.  When I think of G, I only want to bear witness to my Brother of God, whole and holy.  Otherwise, I am not free.  I am blind and bound.  But in order to keep walking ahead on my chosen path of separation, I have felt the need to continuously turn back and review his copious fouls. (Trust me, there are no shortage.)  But I feel that this keeps both of us in bondage.  How do I reconcile my choice to incriminate him…. In order to free myself….?

The pain in my hip is getting worse.  It feels like I am screaming inside.  All of the screams and groans of agony that I have suppressed over the past three and a half years.  I have been waking up every two hours for the past month… unable to find relief from the pain.  That is why I was able to pound out this troubled testimony… because I couldn’t sleep past 3:38am.  

But no matter how many times I fall…  I climb back up on the Unicorn, gently kick her pristine, white sides, pet her velveteen neck and urge her on beyond the morning star.  To the peace and health and happiness that have always been mine.  

Hello from the Other Side…

Hello from the other side of quarantine.  Yep, Serena and I had “the Covid”.  Two weeks of marinating in the living room with my babies.  It wasn’t as bad as I imagined.  The mind looooves to make terrible scenarios… but thankfully real life is never as horrific.  Even with cancer and an emotionally retarded husband.  Haha.  But seriously, there’s Life… and then there’s one’s interpretation of Life… based of course on the complex ecosystem of Past Experiences, fears, hopes, threads of Destiny…

The time passed without differentiation.  It was just a big, gooey blob of sprawling presence.  It was me laying on the super comfy memory foam mattress in the living room, snuggling with a hot water bottle and an ice pack.  It was Serena watching hours of youtube videos of this tween who plays out intricate scenarios with her Frozen dollies (you know, Elsa and Anna).  It was Forest passionately putting together puzzle after puzzle.  It was me listening to copious amounts of Louise Hay videos on youtube to keep focused on healing and stay sane.  By the end, I really had a taste for some Alone Ness.  

I feel like a convict, fresh out of prison.  I nearly forgot how to live.  I nearly forgot how to express myself in deliberate streams of words.  The babysitter came and I just sat watching her do a puzzle with Forest… until it occurred to me that I could touch my fingers to the keys and see what happened.  I have felt so estranged from my writer self.  My identities have been simmering down to a very miniscule reduction.  I’m not sure whether to be frightened by this, or relieved.

Oh, you want to know how covid was for us?  Riiight.  It was a cake walk.  Serena went first.  She was extremely tired, had a headache, an eye ache, a belly ache… if she had a fever it was too minimal to detect with my hand.  This lasted for two days.  I got a minor cough and felt exhausted for a couple days.  I was glad to know that it was just covid and I wasn’t dying of cancer.  And now, I am eligible for a “super green pass”… which means that I can go to the post office again!  Or take a train.  Nazi Germany anyone?

So that’s the surface of my life.  Now let’s turn over some rotten logs and big boulders and see what more we can discover about this Humble Existence otherwise known as Athena Grace.  

A few blogs ago, I remember casting a seductive promise that I would express my deep longing for Family… But this is a classic case of snooze and lose… because the moment hath passethed.  My longing for family has capsized in the small boat that carries this deranged family from moment to moment.

Giordano moved back into the house.  There was no discussion.  Suddenly there was just a perpetually troubled man with beer breath lurking on the couch.  (I was gonna say “my couch”, but he has been crystal clear that it’s HIS couch.  He has expressed ample disdain that the cats sleep on it and mess up the pillows and leave their “pil” (hair) around.  It tickled me that he was pretending to be all important about how it cost two thousand euros… when in reality he got it for free on one of his paid dump runs.  No, it’s NOT dumpy.  And I see his point.  But come ON.  Relax dude.)  

I guess you can get a sense of my current attitude.  I just don’t appreciate that he came back under the pretense that he would create a separate room downstairs for himself… yet when rubber met road, he really had no such intention.  I never meant to live with him again.  I never meant to be obligated to clean up after him like a mommy.  And now that he gets the goods without having to be accountable, he never takes care of Forest.  This pisses me off.  

In fact, we have a date for legal separation on March 17th, which just happens to be the anniversary of my Mama’s passing.  And once this occurs, the boy in man’s clothing will be legally accountable for taking care of his son, financially and otherwise.  And the BEST part?  He will be obliged to sign Forest’s passport so that we can travel to California!!!  The fickle drawbridge is finally lowering across the crocodile laden moat.  It’s very badass.  

What was NOT very badass was my FEAR.  I was too chicken to talk about these topics with G.  Really, we only have a real talk like once a year.  All other attempts are aborted by criticism, violence and dissociation, all of which I am abstaining from.  So I simply waited for my lawyer to contact his lawyer… and for his lawyer to contact him.  Does that sound lame?  It’s NOT a flattering reflection for me to observe.   But given that he has not gone out of his way to make me feel safe… I guess it’s legit.  Anyway, it was a heavy load to carry- this knowing of a court date- while he was concurrently living as though we were still a couple.  

Haven’t I just created a dandy little COMPLEX situation?!  Sometimes I get so swayed by his odd dedication to our sad little family.  Well Forest isn’t sad.  But everyone else is.  And I have this feeling that if I don’t find my way to a better life, my soul will ditch this stupid world.  Yes, at the end of the day, I think it’s pretty dumb here.  But I’m still willing to LOVE IT TO SMITHEREENS.  I’m still willing to raise my kids and evolve as a contribution to OUR evolution.  I’m willing to BE here and to be of SERVICE.  To execute this intention, I need to free myself.  

I believe I manifested intense illness because I said NO to myself TOO MANY TIMES.  I have wanted to leave since I got here.  Hence buying plane tickets TWICE and then flushing them down the figurative toilet.  G is a barnacle.  Once attached, he’s hard to get rid of!  And it doesn’t make it easier having a very fabulous child together.  Either I am a total idiot, or I am on an insurmountable Path of Mastery.  

I prefer to entertain the later.  Yeah, I’m done ridiculing and condemning myself.  What’s the bloody point?  Being cruel to one’s self is not a one way ticket to heaven, which is my chosen direction.  I spent so much time begrudging myself for the choices I made.  So much so that I began to eat myself alive.  Now is the time for love.  Radical, Big-Gun Love.

But let it be written that I found the ovaries to tell him myself about our date for legal separation.  Which of course was anticlimactic…. I still don’t know if he’s accepted the reality of this… or if he cares.  We just don’t talk.  It’s a loveless state of affairs.  To live with a man who never asks me what’s on my mind, or how I’m feeling… or shares his inner world with me.  Let it be written that by now I AM STARVING.  Starving for love and intimacy and deep and delightful sex.  And this starvation is actually compelling me to keep moving forward.  Because if I DON’T, I will starve to death.  

I’m ready to set foot on American Soil.  I’m ready to eat dill pickles and hug redwoods and immerse in the frigid waters of the Pacific Ocean.  I’m ready to splash and frolic in the hallowed culture from whence I sprung.  I’m ready to hug the heck out of my estranged friends and family.  

And let it be known that the whole time I was writing these words, G has been laying next to me on said memory foam mattress… snoring away and smelling like beer.  It’s four minutes after noon.  But let it be known too that the man is suffering and I’m very sorry for this.  

Postcards from a zooming, living spaceship we fondly know as Earth….

Claiming Unassailable Enough-ness

I’ve never written one of those Christmas letters… you know the kind that creatively elucidates the highlights of the previous year and gets nestled into the annual christmas card… All my years seemed to melt together like skittles in a hot bath.  A sickeningly sweet puddle of bleeding color.  Not that my life is sickeningly sweet… But it certainly bleeds with unruly colors.  Anyway, 2021 was definitely a year to “write home about”.  The transformation has descended in lightning jolts.

A year ago Christmas Eve, the resident oncologist at the local hospital, Dr. Gunnalini (or “Dr. Kundalini”, as I enjoy referring to him) gazed into my eyes, unblinking and void of decipherable emotion and announced in his broken english that I had “lung disease”.  Usually I loooove broken english.  But in that moment, with my heart flailing about in my left shoe… I did not.  I never did understand why Dr. Kundalini looked at me that way.  I honestly couldn’t tell if the blood pumping through his veins was warm or cold.  

The amount of fear I have had to navigate this year.  Wow.  Sleepless, sweaty nights, curled up between my kids, contemplating my mortality.  Not sexy.  Not at all.  But so many people rose to my occasion, supporting our family in every way imaginable.  Somewhere along this journey I heard someone say that cancer doesn’t kill people, FEAR DOES.  Maybe that sounds far fetched… but from the inside, I’ll say it’s NOT.  I have met myriad moments in this past year, where the snake-esque fear has succeeded to paralyze me and then eat me alive.  Meanwhile, I have endeavored to act like everything is “normal” so that my kids don’t have to grope and fondle the melting walls of hell along with me.  

Adriano the naturopath often tells me that my healing journey is the transcendence of fear.  I used to hear this and feel to be scaling Mount Impossible.  But slowly, over time I am witnessing my heart lighten and my faith in the eternal nature of Life strengthen.  Sure I still get scared.  I’m human.  But I don’t panic at every strange body sensation.  Seriously.  This is a thing.  Once they slap a “cancer label” on you, every sensation becomes a potential source of threat, of death.  At some point, you’ve gotta just let go.  Or eat your own face off.  

I am beginning to accept what I AM.  I am beginning to accept that Life never ends but merely shifts shape.  I am beginning to accept that Life, in Her infinite perfection, makes no mistakes.  I can only do my best to make Life affirming choices and leave the rest to Eternal Ultimacy.  

Life is showing me that gaining control over thoughts and feelings is the key to wellness.  Disease cannot manifest in an elevated energy field.  Did I tell you about my Osteopath?  Usually osteopaths work with the physical body… but this guy is super “alterna”.  We meet online.  He feels into me and then opens his Osho book.  He told me that I need to make love.  He says that my course of healing is to exercise the “gorilla” (conditioning) from inside me.  He assigned me to write out all my desires as if they have already been fulfilled.  He is intuitive.  He recommended a book to me called Love Yourself Into Life; The Magic Book.  It’s a channeled book- my favorite!  I’ve gotten so much out of it, just opening to random pages.  In one segment, the entity “Ramtha” said that our purpose here on earth is to BE.  We have no other grand purpose as we love to imagine.  

Simply to BE.

I am finally ready to accept this.  My conditioning has had me contorting into all sorts of strange shapes to feel “enough”… but always falling short.  I’m officially exhausted.  I’m ready to be enough as I am.  He says that we are never obligated to return to the earth plane.  We come here because of Desire.  But once we can just flow with the purity of nature within and without, we will remember our divine wholeness and there will be no need to return.  

I used to laugh at my Mama, feverishly doing her kriyas so that she could be free-ya from this place-a.  I felt so big in my little britches as I touted that I personally didn’t care where I incarnated, as long as I could be useful.  But after this past “transformational” year… I actually wouldn’t mind being done here.  So flow with nature, I shall.  

Do you understand the potency of this fundamental shift?  Given my inner tangle, it is EPIC.  To claim my unassailable enoughness, and LIVE BY IT.  That’s unprecedented.  I have always felt that I needed to prove myself to the world.  Really to my dad, I guess.  Gotta luv that jewish programming- the compulsive scramble to “be somebody”.  He was always pestering me about going to college.  But not from a place of love or empowerment… more of a rigid denial of the possibility of dying a Nobody; poor, legacy-less and alone.  

As my eyes danced across the page of this spiritually weighty book, melting and mingling my mind with its insides, I felt my readiness to surrender gather and swell.  After being held in compromising pretzel positions of the soul for the past year, my resistance is fatigued and I’m truly ready to accept that Life is THIS MOMENT, which actually IS whole and complete as I AM.  

Gosh, I wanted to tell you so much.  About our Christmas.  About the fine strings of melted cheese, like spider threads, dancing about the post-christmas lunch table as Giordano’s mama spooned round pasta onto plates.  Rafaella’s well-worn hands, so intimate with the sponge and the warm, soapy water as she tended to the dirtied lunch dishes… and how that felt like an expression of cosmic intimacy.  About our distorted family dynamics…. So much life material burning my seams undone… I guess I’ll have to write a book!  Stay tuned.

For now, I’ll sign off by wishing you deep abiding peace.  May the innocence of the Baby Jesus pervade your mind, heart and Life.  It’s always right here within… we just have to WANT to see and feel it.  I hope you do! 

An Intelligent Emptiness…

Drip, drip, drip… the snow melts slowly outside.  Ten minutes ago I was about to spread open my laptop and nestle into a comfy writing space… when I smelled poop.  After a brief investigation, I discovered that it was smeared all over Fluffy Cute’s fluffy little “boodle”.  Fluffy Cute is Serena’s very fluffy and very very cute cat.  Boodle is one of my favorite terms of endearment for butts.  I love hearing Forest matter-of-factly refer to his anatomy as “boodle”.  At this point, on this rigorous and bitter path I tread, I’m all about cheap thrills and micro delights.  

So I washed her fluffy boodle in the kitchen sink with tea tree oil shampoo, changed the duvet cover, swept up all the stupid little feathers that cascaded out of the comforter when I unsheathed it, and now I am here!  This is the way it has been.  So many disruptions as I navigate my daily way.  On one hand, it’s frustrating.  On the other hand, it’s good practice in the under-rated art of letting go.   It has felt so bloody hard to move forward.  At least by the will of my conditioning…. 

The River of Life is always moving…  perhaps even “forward”, at that…

I always feel a little extra creaky in the joints as I attempt to write again after a too-long silence.  But I have so much to say. 

So naturally, I’ll start with the most crucial material.  I need you to know that Forest has a proclivity for sleeping with his toys.  No, not cute, fluffy stufties… Like plastic trucks and helicopters and leggos.  Sometimes he has a whole arm-load of accessories accompanying him to bed.  Then he’s all restless under the covers and perpetually preoccupied with organizing all the hard, clunky parts.  Sometimes they get lost and we have to pause the story, so he can pull back the comforter and recover the estranged toys.  This little dance of his never ceases to tickle me… even as I simmer with annoyance because I just want to read the danged book and make him sleep already.  He is currently obsessed with his truck book.  It just has pictures of trucks and construction and emergency vehicles.  We read it before nap AND bedtime.  Really I’m so sick of by now… but each time he chooses it, I challenge myself to encounter it new.  Insert dramatic, crying emoji face here______.

It’s cool to have one girl and one boy.  I am making a deep study of masculine and feminine energy.  Serena… with her deep, brooding emotional life.  Her incessant need for love and approval.  Her prudent movement through moments.  And Forest who just wants to know how everything works and is fierce to do it (whatever it is) by himself.  Individually, they are both delightful.  Together….  

Together they are a kick in the guts.  

These days my life feels like being bound and gagged in a glacial, stony torture chamber, made to endure too frequent deluges of infantile conflict, whining, crying, demands, needs (other than my own)… Thankfully this is interspersed with way too fleeting sunny moments of delicious harmony.  But seriously, if you want to torture someone to the point of madness, give them two (or more) children to care for without a supportive partner, without a satisfying (or even unsatisfying) sex life, without adequate social interaction.  Heck, just plunk them down in the countryside somewhere, ideally where they don’t speak the language.  

Oh Athena BASTA!!!  

Let’s stay positive my Love…  

Listen, I know I tend to dive and frolic in dramatic embellishment… and maybe that’s not the most nutritive course for us… but… If I pretend to be all tidy and positive, nobody wins either, because such hyper-positivity has little to do with real life.  I need to walk in the middle.  I need to inform you of the struggle.  Speaking of struggle, I remember Matt Kahn (my favorite spiritual teacher) once saying that success was waaay more surreal for him than the struggle ever was.  That really got my attention, because I thirst for the type of success that he has acquired:  spreading his love ministry far and wide, writing books, rolling in cash, praising the Lord every step of the Way.  

So in regards to my struggle…  I confess that I can feel it’s implicit rightness.  It is cultivating something within me that I deeply desire.  An intelligent emptiness.  

If “intelligent emptiness” sounds too vague to you, here is a concrete sketch of such a recent experience:  Giordano spent the night at our house because it was raining and he could not pick olives, nor press them by moonlight.  All four of us were packed into our “matrimonial” bed.  Ha!  Yeah, they don’t have the same names for mattress sizes here… so ours is probably equivalent to a “queen”… but it’s called “matrimoniale”.  Serena was snoring away, Forest was finally quiet after an unusual display of spunk and jubilance (I think because he was so happy to be with both parents at once) and Giordano was fading fast.  I was awake.  Listening.  Feeling.

Listening to the choir of breath.  Feeling the warmth of bodies and soft blankets.  My thoughts were slow and drifting, yet poignant.  I asked myself how would I experience this moment without a notion of past or future.  Love.  Love was the answer.  It was a perfect and beautiful moment.  Four creatures who care for one another, all nestled together in a confined, safe and soft venue.  

These days, the focus of my healing is in the emotional realm.  I have a team of healing allies who are offering me practices to illuminate, dissolve and refine my emotional life.  I believe that this experience of pure love is the fruit of the work I am doing.  Palpable love is always present…  that’s why Rumi said it is not our task to seek for love, but to seek and destroy the barriers to love within.  

Why do we pretend anything else is important?  

“Important”….

I remember writing a blog about wanting to be “important” back in the day.  You know, before… “cancer”.  I hate that word.  It only invokes unwieldy fear which too easily blocks the deeper implications of healing being summoned by the experience.  Words…  I often wonder why I am a disciple of words… when they can be such a corral to the spirit.  Being tethered to the word “cancer” feels like being crammed into a small, dark closet, and waiting to die.  That’s not the journey I am on.   I am digging deep to find…. my Self.  The ageless, deathless and true me.  I am seeking to make amends with the past, with my relationship to Life Herself.  

But anyway, ain’t nuttin like a healing crisis to refine your definition of “important”.  

What is important to me NOW?  Breaking stinky, life-negating habits.  Learning how to hear, feel and trust my innermost self.  Helping my kids be healthy and happy.  Helping myself be healthy and happy.  Learning to trust Life and follow Her lead.  Family.

Yes, you heard right.  I said “Family”.  Isn’t that funny?  Maybe it isn’t to you.  But up until a few moments ago, I would have sworn I was allergic to “Family”.  But then I took a year to be by myself and naturally there were perks to that, but overall it sucked.  I’d like to write a whole blog on this topic… but I can’t make promises at this point, because the undertow of Life is waaay too fierce these days.  Instead of half-empty promises, I will make a light yet fervent request of the universe, to shepherd me back to the blazing white pastures of Athena Graceland ASAP, so that I can sing you my fond song of fractured yet essential Family.  

Zombie Apocalypse Wedding Anniversary

For halloween I shall be a Zombie Apocalypse Bride.  Torn, blood stained white lace caressing dead flesh, wide and vaccuous sunken eyes, stiff, unrelenting swagger and the faint smirk of one who will not be deterred from her Mission….

Her Mission… Chasing love that cannot be.

Today is my third wedding anniversary.  Last year on this day I was partying down in my hospital bed after an abrasive brush with death.  Today I am in MY bed.  Pink walls all around, gay streams of pale autumn sunlight dripping and mingling with fleeting rainbow smears.  How much do you want to bet me that Hubby Dearest doesn’t remember?  I’ll bet you anything aside from my precious Life or Children.

And why SHOULD he remember?  We are mostly finished with our semi-erotic struggle, aren’t we?  I imagined so until last week when he “threatened” to move in downstairs.  He came around (after a long stretch of anonymity and segregation) and chopped wood for me and the kids, as the cold was upon us.  And he wasn’t even mean!  I was swooning.  Ha!  I find that mostly amusing (with a side of tragedy), that that’s all it takes to get my motor purring.  A man chopping wood for me and not attacking me!  Guess I still have some inner work to do…

Anyway I was enjoying the thrill… of dipping back into the choppy waters of “Family”.  Believe it or not 😉 I was growing weary being an isolated single mom of two in the less-than-romantic italian countryside.  

Serena and I got really into the TV series “Merlin”… the epic tale of Camelot.  We watched all five seasons.  Morgana, the evil yet stunningly gorgeous witch of the “Old Religion” had her favorite go-to torture device– a little wooden box with a cobra-esque snake inside.  Maybe it even had a few heads…  She used it when she needed someone to “talk”, as the pain it could inflict was unbearable, yet never fatal.  It could torture someone for eternity if they could stand it.  Numerous times I have derived self-contained amusement, imagining that MY personal torture snake is LONELINESS.  And isolation…

Lately it has been seering inside me.  The ungodly roar has become more fierce since we moved back to “The Family Home” (Giordano’s family home).  Here there is no neighborhood or shops nearby.  Taking a simple walk with the kids requires driving to a less busy road… which means I end up housebound often because it seems like too much trouble to get out.  I’m not complaining… just articulating the terrain for you.  Entering the glorious season of death, darkness and cold amplifies the situation.  When I was in the heart of my journey through illness, I was surrounded by caring, helpful people.  But as soon as I turned the corner back into the oft under-valued paradise that is Wellness, the glitter and dust cleared and I was alone with two littles in the lush throes of Nowhere.  

Are you following me?  Or is my devotion to the art of saying it beautifully obstructing your vista?  I’m telling you that the experience of hosting a loneliness who sprawls on for days, and weeks and years…. Starts to become unbearable.  It is cruel acid to one’s personal will.  It waits not for the anonymity of darkness to pillage and destroy one’s inner sanctum.  

Ok, that was dramatic.  I’m looking at my relationship to drama at this point, because I have noticed that She is a costly guest to entertain!  Creating little dramatic scenarios just so I can “get off”…  STOP THE MUSIC.  Flip the cassette.  Let’s groove to some mellow B-side love for a while!  Let’s get down with some peace on earth and mercy mild.  

So my body and heart are starving and then G comes and cuts my wood and we have a relatively minor tiff and then he kisses me deep in the doorway and I’m mostly into it.  Whaaaaaat????  I didn’t know we were doing THAT anymore.  Game on.

Yeah, I’m embarrassed to admit it didn’t take but a slight breeze to flip my switch and reel me back into the dubious domain of the rancid game of wistful wishing to be seen, heard, appreciated, MET by a man who just CAN’T.  Most of the “selves” inside me KNOW the impossibility of such a longing.  But not the Zombie Apocalypse Bride.  She has no interest in charting history and predicting relational trends.  She is a diehard for Family and that’s the end of the story.  Jagged teeth bared, she was petitioning me to plunge back into the deep end of the nuclear family pool and do my best not to sink.  

The self in me who has been holding out for ideal love was like “WHAAAAAAAAT????!!!  Are you out of your MIND???”  But the Zombie Bride tried to smooth talk her into crushing compromise…. “It’s no biggie that he never acknowledges you when you speak.  Only babies need to be acknowledged.  Heavyweight champions are far beyond such pettiness.”

Her argument was compelling.  In the name of seeing Forest happier.  In the name of maybe being slightly less tortured by the awful snake in the box… In the name of having slightly more help maybe.  In the name of having a man and his cornucopia of tools around to save a day now and again.  Maybe even in the name of a bit of decent sex.

If I had’ve written a blog last week (as I wanted to), the tone would have been completely different.  I would have been building a fortress of words to house my hefty hope, and inviting you to climb inside and enjoy a cold one with me.  I’ve been riding this slightly deranged spiral merry-go-round (Life) for forty one years now (let’s not even pop the top on the whole past life can of worms) and I’m starting to be privvy to my cyclic waves of delusion and sensationalism.  

But hoping feels good.  And so does the possibility of sacred compromise.  Giving up ideals in order to be more fully engaged and intimate with what (and whom) is actually here on this vivid stage with me.  

The actual experience of being close to Giordano rarely feels good.  Nor does the notion of relinquishing me heart’s desire- to be fully met in deliciously erotic love.  To attract a partner who adores me and is not afraid to show it; who lives for “doing the work”.  Not for ME, but for himself.  WITH me.  But yikes, can I please be done with relationships that feel like WORK???  Can “the work” feel gentle and respectful and sexy and FUN???  

I came too close to tossing my dream in the dumpster and diving back into the constricting pool of dissonance and distance in “love”.  But thankfully Giordano broke his word a few more times and then dissolved into olive picking oblivion.  And I’ve had some time for all the king’s horsemen and all the king’s men to put me back together again. 

Maybe he still will come back home…. But I will not be a gelatinous puddle of hope and willingness to settle.  What I am coming to see about myself (after too much suffering) is that the voices inside which represent extremes are not my TRUE Voice.  They are conditioned responses.  My True Voice lives in the middle; unattached to outcomes.  Only interested in presence, honesty, integrity and loving with ever-increasing purity and refinement.  She cares not for sensationalism, chasing highs, steamy make-outs and dramatic scenarios.  Her quiet passion is to meet Life, breath by breath with sobriety and friendliness.  

(And for the Record, I was NOT renouncing steamy make-outs.  Just saying that I won’t chase them down or sacrifice a single drop of my gorgeous Totality in their name.)

Salutations from the edge of the Cosmic Void

I once heard that we are always living “inside of questions”.  Questions that inform our choices, actions, words, inner terrain.  I like this notion because it’s a key to navigating Life.  Since the whole cancer extravaganza, the question that often surfaces in me is, “Am I dying or healing or ascending?”

I feel things I’ve never felt before.  They snag my attention.  I dig in… deep inside… flushing with desperation that seems to lift me like a helium balloon, far from the earth and my ea​​rthen body.  The not-to-be-missed experience of being out of control.  I am determined to make peace with this experience.  Actually, come to think of it, I’d love to make peace with every experience.  I’d love to value peace enough to choose it in every circumstance.  The only reason we are without peace, is because we don’t value it enough to choose it over the habits forged by a rigid and sniveling ego structure.  

Here is a perfect example!  My lion-hearted Russian housekeeper just dropped by to pick up some collagen our mutual friend is selling her so that she can be eternally young and perfect.  I was hunkered down on the sofa, bating in the cozy glow of my laptop screen and she asked me how I was.  I told her (in broken italian!) that these days are “pessante” (heavy).  I told her that I was writing down il mio mondo interiore (my inner world)  and she said why don’t I write a book.  Instead of smiling ear to ear and saying “Yeah Baby you can bet your stylish britches I WILL,” I got all teary and said how hard it is to write with the current circumstances of my life.  I said I wanted to write a book that was potent and valuable and she said I was strong and what’s inside me IS potent and valuable.  

Crying about my limitations is much more familiar to me than breaking on through to the other side.  Which history has proven, is waaaaay easier than the mind would lead one to believe.  It’s just a matter of being loose in the mind and emotions and moving forward, step by step no matter what.  Why do I looooove to feel sorry for myself and cry rather than giving myself to my Dreams and Destiny?

That is a question I do NOT love to live inside of!  

I prefer to live inside of a question like “what is the next step on the path of my heart’s greatest fulfillment?”  And “what am I grateful for today?”

Today is the five week anniversary of my most recent surgery.  It’s weird trying to compare the first one to the second one… though they were similar in that I was sliced down the middle each time, the context as well as the one experiencing the experience were quite different.  My emergency surgery was nearly a year ago… October 20th, 2020.  My own special, scintillating slice of twenty twenty vision.  Haha.  

This has been the most transformative year of my life.  And probably “Lives”…  I know that it’s easy to get hung up on the outer circumstances of this rough period of Collectively coming undone…  It’s wildly uncomfortable, out of control, unpredictable… But there are those of us who have been waiting for this moment in history for decades.  Watching the old systems groan and creak and crumble…. Wondering WHEN the real party would start.  Then covid danced down upon us like a gentle blanket of new fallen…. POOP!

(An aside- I have renounced swearing for the time being… My luminous, intuitive massage therapist suggested that this might be a healing practice for me.  If you know me, you KNOW that I have fought HARD for my right to mouth off freely.  But I value his perspectives and at this point, I’d much prefer to heal than be dumb old RIGHT.  I started to pay attention to WHEN the swear words started to flow… and saw that it was mostly from anger.  An inner response of hardening to Life.  Swinging my fists at this eternally unwieldy Game.  I do NOT need to hold onto THAT behavior.  Though I am ashamed to admit that I still haven’t tapped into the depth of self-discipline required to stop the cascade of fucks and dicks and asses that pour forth when I am upset with my kids.  I am working on it.  I publicly admit (to them) that this is not right.  “Mama is not doing right, but she is working on it.  I’m sorry.  That’s the best I’ve got in this moment…. But aiming to improve.”)

So the old systems are swaying in the bitter, bone-rattling winds of change… And over here, there’s a lot of letting go of The Old… but not a lot of generating The New… yet.  It takes courage to trust this molten, searing in-between.  

When I was in the hospital, I felt as though my hard drive was being erased.  I felt like a vegetable.  Totally debilitated, naked, empty.  I didn’t feel like reading books or having video chats.  I just layed there, gazing at a crucified Christ on the adjacent wall, or the invalid woman in the bed who rested below him…  She seemed to be hovering on the edge of life and death, without a lot of love and kindness to chaperone her from one world to the next.  It was heart breaking.  

My room in the “Pital” (hospital) was shared with three other rotating women patients.  It quickly became clear that there was an unspoken culture which decreed that the patient who was the most physically capable became a mother hen to the others in the room.  When I first awoke from my “intervento”, there was now way in heck (haha I’m soooo clean now!) that I could fill the role of Mother Hen to the others.  I couldn’t even take a full breath, due to the intensity and pain in my abdomen…

But toward the end of my hospital holy-day, I was hobbling around attending to the needs of the others.  (The nurses were really not so illuminated as I expected them to be at the PADRE PIO HOSPITAL!  Their personalities grated on us, metal on metal.)  One day, said old lady was having a difficult moment and the staff was not answering the service bell.  I came to her bedside and took her hand.  She held it as though her life depended on it.  I was deeply moved by the raw humanity revealed in such an act.  Don’t you think we all need such a compassionate hand?  But when we are “well”… we have enough defense mechanisms to pretend otherwise.  To pretend we can do it alone; that we don’t need a helping hand, or the love therein.  

It was a humbling moment of truth for me.  Maybe one of the most meaningful of my life.  

So I was emptied…

And now I’m home…

People are telling me that I am free from that old life of pain and disonance, and it’s time for me to write my new life into Existence.  Sounds like a no-brainer, right?  But I still feel so raw and undone that when I hold my poised pen to paper… I only hover intimately at the edge of the Cosmic Void.  I know that what I have is not what I want…. A single mother of two, consumed by the magnificent and faith-full act of self-healing.  I’m tired of being so tired.  I’m tired of feeling so isolated.  I’m tired of carrying a backpack full of boulders up this steep, crumbly mountain face.  

There is an art to knowing when to simply flow with what IS, and when to call on the inner warrior goddess and say ENOUGH NONSENSE, I choose something else.  

I want to manifest soul-satisfying work-  teaching online writing courses.  Leading real-time women’s circles dedicated to creativity and connection.  I want to reVIVE my love-drunk typewriter and pour forth healing words for the healing, upliftment and inspiration of ALL.  I want to write profound and groovy books that set others free.  

All of these dreams throbbing in a symphonic cry for realization within all that I AM.  I just need to lighten up and move forward.  Sounds profoundly simple…  But I feel like I’m wading upstream in a quicksand river.  

I know it starts where I AM.  

I know it starts with Gratitude for what I have.

A lot can be said for

The sweltering discipline of loving what IS.

Maybe it’s EVERYthing….

Slowly Swallowed by Surrender

Giordano told me today that he is dying and he will never forgive me.  Because I left with Forest…

Words are strong, aren’t they?  Wow.  Those words.  And the worlds they evoke within.  The universe is really making a grand effort to remind me of the POWer of words lately. (and moreso, the power of what is beneath and beyond them, which they aim to transmit…)  They are my Gift, and my Gift will be best given in the spirit of consciousness and reverence.  I’ve always done my best… but now I get to rise to the next level if I DARE be that awake and self referential and responsible.  And awesome.

But let’s talk about Forgiveness.  

When I first got my diagnosis I panicked.  I didn’t realize it, but I was operating under so many low-consciousness belief systems.  About cancer.  About disease.  About healing.  About myself and life and God.  (No wonder I got sick!)  The oncologist at the local hospital “Dr. Kundalini” told me I must start chemotherapy at once.  I told him I would get a second opinion.  Then I leapt into the abyss.  But I was still operating at a very gross level.  Powerless.  Fearful.  Desperate.  I hoped that being hyper controlling about my diet would save my life.  I went therapeutic keto and ate as much fat as I could… but it was never enough and…. my body said FERMA!!!  (That’s stop in italian.  Yeah I’m like SO inculturated that my body dabbles in italian!)  Instead my consciousness is slowly spreading open like a lotus emerging into the light.  And this is the true nature of healing.

Life sent me an AMAZING book.  “Healing and Recovery”.  It is spilling with diamonds that cut deep into my understanding.  It explains how to heal at the level of consciousness.  In the chapter about cancer, it said cancer can’t even grow in the higher energy fields which reflect Truth.  This book also refers to MY Good Book, A Course in Miracles, as it is a path of realigning with The Source through complete forgiveness.  

I am allowing Life to show me where I have been holding grievances and unconscious guilt, so I can let it go.  ACIM says that the Holy Spirit will assist with this process.  Thank frickin GOD because I don’t know how to do it alone.  But because MY LIFE DEPENDS ON IT at this point, I’m all about being helped by the Holy Spirit.  Honestly, I don’t even know exactly what the Holy Spirit IS…. but I’m sure it’s FANTASTIC and I’m jazzed to be assisted by such Cosmic Benevolence.  

Naturally Giordano is at the top of my list of grievances.  I just deleted the lines describing said grievances… as a part of my exploration around the power of words.  I don’t need to enroll you in his stupidity.  Especially if my commitment truly is forgiveness.  Look at ME, I’m growing UP!!  Haha.  He has given me myriad moments to meet myself in the darkest dimensions.  Hatred.  Rage.  Desperation.  Loneliness.  The Hard Stuff.  

But the Holy Spirit is helping me undo my seeing.  My self righteous view point.  I have no control over his behavior.  I can’t make him “do right” by way of a power struggle!  Funny that I even imagined that as the way and the light.  It’s so not.  In fact, binging on that behavior for two and a half years straight nearly KILLED me.   

But it’s damn tricky.  To keep practicing having boundaries.  Expressing my needs.  Without charge.  As kindly as I can manage.  But not fluffy.  Firm.  Clear.  Wow.  I just realized Darling Giordano is helping me strengthen my own inner masculine.  So are my kids, actually.  And so is Life.  If I had a shiny euro coin for every time I’ve needed to be held while on this “Italy Spree” and there was nobody there… Yup.  Rich Bitch.  But the beauty of nobody being there… is that I get to meet myself.  

I get to meet myself when people ARE there also….

I am learning hard but satisfying lessons.  Learning to hold myself.  Learning to trust myself.  My aforementioned book talks about how it’s ALL belief systems.  And we have the power to cancel them.  If our minds have the power to make us sick, they also have the power to make us WELL.  This is what I have been sitting with.  Letting it filter dowwwwn.  Innnnnn.  Opening to the sacred responsibility of being awake.  

Manuela Forte acknowledged me yesterday for walking the way of “natural faith”, and recognized the parallel between the healing journey I am now on, and the way that I birthed Forest.  Free from the constraints of meddling medical “authorities”.  Surrendered to the infinite wisdom of my body and soul.  I got dizzy trying to follow all the disparate external voices of “experts” (and a spray of arm-chair experts as well) and in the end, I fell back onto my own bony lap!  Haha it’s really not THAT bony these days… Anyway, it felt heavenly to be Seen.  Seen not through the eyes of conditioning, but for the deep and potent journey my soul is making.  This letting go, with as much trust as I can muster in a given moment, which is pumping into me at a slow, steady increase.  My mission is to fully surrender to The Source.  And to let this restored connection heal me on every level.  let’s not mess around.  Dig straight for the ROOTS, baby.

I have allies and guides on the Journey.  

But I am the only one who knows.  

And this is both thrilling and terrifying. 

(Just like men, but that’s another story!…)

Dance With Death (part II)

Then came Serena.  I took a few thwarted stabs at going to dance with her.  But then I was being mommy trying to dance, not Athena The Star.  I have lived six very sobering years, culminating with the past two and a half being the “Grand Finale”.  The Grand Finale of my old life.  My old self.  The irony, people, is that I ALREADY HAVE DIED.  A thousand times over.  I just haven’t left my body.  I am not ready to do so.  OH!  That reminds me of my Epiphany about life and death.  I’ll tell you in a sec!

(One element of this blog is my spontaneous comments on The Art of Writing.  Authentic writing requires TRUSTING THE MIND.  My Original Mind burst in and grabbed the wheel, hot to tell you about something other than what I was talking about… and if I was to be a “good girl”, I would have silently made a note or just pushed it aside and kept going.  But as the AUTHOR, I am incharge.  Let all the other Suckas follow the boring assed rules!  Author=AUTHORity)

Can you feel Edith Piaf’s impassioned voice boiling over behind these words?  It is… and it is touching my insides as they must be touched!  She transmits a depth of longing, experience, strength… that touches a world in me- wide awake and aching for S P A C E  and light.  She is singing me alive and I am writing you alive and YOU are______ .  It’s a fractiling domino chain of pressing wine out of our human struggles.  Does it get any better?!  Yeah.  If I was at the beach.  Or making transcendent love.  Or riding a horse.  

So in these recent grueling years, I would not have imagined that I was becoming what I most wanted to be (a clarified version of ME).  It felt like the farthest thing from what I was becoming.  My soul was withdrawing from this world because my experience sucked too much ass.  It was like walking through a looooong, daaaaaaark tunnnnnnnel.  I entered it through the portal of ecstatic dance six years ago, and last sunday, POP!  I finally made it to the other side.  Out into the light of intimacy and WHOLENESS.  And I am NOT going back.  I am SO fucking prooud of myself for the deep work I have done that I didn’t even realize `I was doing.  And this could be YOU too.  You might be sitting over there with your face melting off in the sweltering heat of your alchemical container and everything looks black and sludgy and you are thinking to yourself WHAT THE FUCK… Take heart my blossoming warriors, ambassadors and bearers of The Light.  You can TRUST in this alchemy.

My bounty of Ananda friends love to tout that “the joy is within you”.  And I confess that in my moments of “dark night” (most of my life), I have really hated to hear that, because then it’s like what the fuck is wrong with me for not having access to my own damn self????  But now that I am reclaiming my life and my Self, I am living this joy daily.  I feel it now.  It’s like a soft, breezy melody of my own soul, swelling inside me,  flushing me with prismatic glow.  Maybe I AM made of joy after all.  Haha.

But move over, Spiritual Polly-Anna!  Life sure ain’t all lovenlight.  `How many moments have I been cruising along in my sporty little joy bubble and an unwieldy wave of fear rushes in and knocks me on my bony ass.  Waaaaait, I asserted in my last blog that I was RIDING the waves.  Doh… well… I don’t know exactly how to metaphor-ize my experience… all I know is that I am going along fine and then in a lightning flash, I am on my knees, grappling for the highest course of navigation.  It’s usually body sensations that set off the alarm bells. (or Serena not listening and asking why twelve thousand times) Actually it’s more like the bell that sounds at the start of a boxing match.  And then I step in the ring, my bare chest glistening, a trail of blue gatorade still lingering on my chin.  Bobbing.  Weaving.  Jabbing.

Ok I went too far.  But it’s a wild experience to move so swiftly between joy and fear or anger.  Maybe it will make me so dizzy that I will lose my grip on duality once and for all.  I will only feign faith in the transient world of form.  THIS will be my emergence as “Our Lady of God-Drunk Grace”.  The woman I was born to be.

Or maybe I am just hopped up on some questionable sauce… But this is my prayer.  If I don’t make it that far in this life, guess I’ll just keep chipping away on my next galactic adventure(s).

Fuck that I didn’t come straight home from dance and WRITE IT ALL DOWN.  (In fact, while we’re on the subject, FUCK that I didn’t come straight home from EVERYWHERE and WRITE IT ALL DOWN.  My stories… they are a hopelessly swift waterfall spilling into an abyss.  On sunday, the dance was still throbbing in my veins, my cells, my nutrinos!  And now it’s… toilet water in the bay (time for a refreshed metaphor.)  

But here is THE climax moment of my whole dance:  It was toward the end.  As I was moving, I flashed on what my spirit guides told me- to call this cancer journey my “Dance with Death”.  I let the idea filter down through layers of my consciousness as I spun and shimmied and slithered serpentine.  The light was ON.  And I got that “dancing with death” is actually the equivalent to dancing with LIFE.  The yin-yang is not just a cool symbol.  It is a universal truth.  I realized that I am one of the privileged few… (maybe) who was graced with direct experience.  I am no longer regurgitating cheap universal wisdom.  I am paying my own way to WISDOM and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

When I was a child and a young adult, I suffered for not having the EXPERIENCE to match the wisdom of my soul.  And when I reached inside to find the book that I am meant to write… all I got was a blasted DIAL TONE.  Deep down I knew this was because I had essential experiences yet ahead of me, which would ripen my wisdom such that it would just fall on your head with a splat.  Fuck the strained, fabricated shit.  

Life wants FULL SURRENDER from me.  Full fucking surrender.  She told me this directly.  When I asked Giordano months ago to take Forest overnight, he refused.  Then, when I had (actually) let go, BAM!  He whisked Forest out of my bereft arms.  I feel a similar process happening with my writing.  I was desperate to “succeed” at my Art.  A desperation born of feeling “not enough”.  Like if I don’t realize my Gift in this life, I FAIL.  But the sheer beauty of having my life threatened is the realization that just BEING here is enough.  “Let the soft animal of my body love what it loves”.

Ah but the secret paradox is that from my current perch at the edge of the abyss, I am rediscovering my worth.  My edges have become softer (not to mention my gooey tootsie roll Center.)  I am genuinely content to flow through my days on winds of ineffable grace.

AND.

That said, I keep writing, because I MUST.  Because it feels so damn GOOD that it MUST be what I am here for.  And now for the moment that Athena Grace toots her own horn!  I have been getting some BITCHIN feedback lately.  I am some peoples’ Favorite Writer.  I move people.  And my writing has its own Life and Plan.  I just need to keep showing up and being receptive.

Can I approach Life and Death with the same depth of faith and surrender?

This is my aim.  By now it is no secret that I WANT TO HEAL and LIVE… but… do I have the ovaries to genuinely and wholeheartedly put mySELF and my LIFE in God’s hands?  I know that’s a dumb question on some level, because there is no other place that my SELF and LIFE could ever be.  It’s a matter of internal orientation.   Like that I can just go on tending my garden of joy, beauty, peace, sensuality, creativity, friendship, etc…. While doing all that is shown me to do to restore my body’s health… and let whatever comes come.  God I want to feel that free.  Not to suffer about what will happen to my kids if I die, or why didn’t I become a hella famous writer.  (Not just famous among my facebook friends and token random strangers.)  

No matter when it’s my time to leave this wacky spaceship, I want to go out blazing with PASSION.  I will be writing and dancing and making love and peeling back the endless folds of my enchanting (and deranged) emptiness.  Self, I promise NEVER to abandon you again.  If you say “GET THE FUCK OUT”, I will listen.  

God help me.