Hera, Here We Are

 

 

**art journal collage

 

Here we are, honoring the Goddess of June (known as Juno to the Romans and Hera to the Greeks).  She is an influencer of womanly things; marriage, childbirth, children, and family.  She was often shown with a pomegranate or pomegranate seeds.  As well, she was depicted as being with cows, lion, and peacocks and her flower is the lily.  On the negative side, she was said to be in control of all things “sky” and could send mighty storms.  She influences us, as well, with both positive and negatives.  Befriending her can help you weather any storms.

She reminds us to set our eyes to the future with strong sense of purpose and to be bold about it.  Boldness is her most influence in our lives for this month and expect to meet your bravery. 

The best way to meet your bravery is to make sure you work hard on your self-esteem.  Also, make sure you are grounded (You might have had a sense of not being connected fully). The world needs heroes.  The world needs women to stand up and be that.  But, be careful, Hera’s story teaches us about being self-centered and narcissism.  Be the hero others need you to be.

You will feel stimulated to learn new things, to approach learning through communication, through being in groups of women.  Find groups that give you a sense of adventure.  That is until June 21^st. 

On June 21^st you will go through a period of being ultra sensitive. (Gemini’s fault as Cancer joins in the fray).   And then the moon, a supermoon, called “Strawberry Moon”, will come flooding in with a strength in feeling and dealing with emotions.   The “offside” is that you may have to relearn a lesson in decisions and consequences of such. 

Another Hera aspect is that you will be caused to use “Tough Love” and use it with a great deal of patience.  You need to check your boundaries and how well they are planted.  You will sense a serious energy around you, betimes, and feel restricted, again, but jut know it is a test to see how responsible and mature you are.  But, you will also feel lots of emotional energy and it is best to expend that by getting involved in some social activities when you can. 

This energy is a feminine energy and will make you feel sensual (not sexual, necessarily), but it will also, or make you very affectionate using affectionate language.  Be sure your boundaries are good and that you are sending out language that does not make you vulnerable. 

Hera has women multi-tasking successfully throughout the last of the month. You will find yourself ‘truth-seeking’.   To clear up any leftover unfinished things of May.  Do you need to make amends for something?  Do you need closure?  Seek those things.  Enjoy new beginnings with Hera.

But, most of all, be your beautiful creative self.  Be authentic with your creativity and seek your personal creative voice.  Make something beautiful.  As you see, I am practicing making flower balls in order to do them when my son and all his kids and grandkids come to the lodge where we will gather.  I will have my middle daughter’s beautiful teenage girls for the week.  We will be making these together.  We will go and shop for the flowers and the Styrofoam balls.  It will be a great creative project as we spend the week together.    

I will be away from home for ten days.  I will be driving 9 hours tomorrow to arrive in time to meet my son and his family from the US.  I have appointments with a Diabetes Specialist again and family doctor appointment and lab appointments.  But, I will have time to enjoy family.  I can hardly wait for tomorrow morning to get started on my way.  In that time, take care of each other, work on a day-planner for things to watch in June, and I will , hopefully, find my iPad at my daughter’s because I had to have left it there.  If I do, then I can get online and check in. 

Much love, beautiful heroes.

©Carol Desjarlais 5.30.22

 

Inner Sanctuary’s Whispers To Go Find Joy

 

 

“At every step, she paused, withdrew to the inner sanctuary, and asked herself, Does this feel right? Her answer came in the form of peace or tension. If she felt tension, she stepped a different way. If she felt peace, she kept going forward.” ― Donna Goddard, Circles of Separation

 Sometimes you feel blah, sometimes anxious, sometimes doom, as a low-level niggling in your body, mind, heart and soul.  Sometimes you just want adventure, you want excitement, you want….well, what you do not want is Drama… you want real, honest to goodness peace…not quiet.. not rapture... no, not that.  You simply don’t want angst, worry, and all its cousin’s.  Sometimes there is fear, but you cannot say what you fear.   You are working at it.  You desire it.  You want to do, think, feel, a calmness, not lethargy, not…again...blah.  You are not depressed.  You are in need of a quick fix of positive energy. 

Maybe you have tried staying busy but busyness does not dispel it any more – it just makes the critical inner voice louder.  You tried listing people, places, things you are grateful for but it is a hollow activity.  You have tried all the body nurturing but it adds to a sense of foreboding instead of gratitude – it only adds to the sense of isolation.  Maybe you tried church bingo, volunteering but it all feels fake as you wear a mask of positivity that you do not feel bone deep.  You are kind of “comfortable” but that comfort is not completely saturating your soul with positivity – it is simply one sense receiving some compassion.  What do we do when we are not clinically depressed, but, maybe, we are situationally depressed.  Yes, that is it.  Covid has robbed us of adventure, of gathering without worry, of peace of mind.  It is covid fatigue and, no matter how well we thought we were doing, now it is starting to show up.

What is needed, I believe, is you begin to notice and name the feelings.  We need to begin to take little risks, to get outside this enforced “comfort zone” we have made for ourselves.  Do we need to get uncomfortable?  Do we need to simply do what we are hesitating to do?  Can we consider the WHY of why we hesitate to get out there and do things we are procrastinating against? 

We are in charge of this all. These negative feelings are not us.  We become bored and hesitant because we are not challenging ourself to get out there and do “something/anything” that will give us the reward of at least trying to brighten up our own world. What we need is dopamine…yes, that ‘good feeling’ reward that comes when we do something different and beat down our hesitations.  The hesitations are our Ego/Inner voice/Lizard Brain trying to fool us into thinking it Is a scary world out there and we best lay low.  There is no joy or reward in that.  See the possibilities (What is the worst that can happen?) and simply begin taking baby steps out into the world and not letting anything rob us, any more, of our adventurous spirit.  We need to bypass the Inner Voice that tells us we cannot, we should not, we would not and listen to your soul that is whimpering in its isolation.

Maybe what we really need is some “euphoria”?  Maybe that is what our Inner Sanctuary is truly asking us to seek.  Yes, I need euphoria that comes from stepping beyond self-imposed boundaries.  I am not going to let this “new” way of living change me.  I am all in for finding some joy.  My Inner Sanctuary did not mean for us to stagnate.  Go For it.

©Carol Desjarlais 5.29.22

 

Re-Frame, Re-Label. Re-Focus, Re-Value

 

 

“The key to happiness - or that even more desired thing, calmness - lies not in always thinking happy thoughts. No. That is impossible. No mind on earth with any kind of intelligence could spend a lifetime enjoying only happy thoughts. The key is in accepting your thoughts, all of them, even the bad ones. Accept thoughts, but don't become them.
Understand, for instance, that having a sad thought, even having a continual succession of sad thoughts, is not the same as being a sad person.” ― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

Once we were cave women and needed negative self-talk to keep us safe from cave bears and keep us safe.  Today, negative self-talk gives us nothing but emotional distress, soul distress, and we self-sabotage.  Today, we correct ourselves with cultural bias in that we critic ourselves, with Ego and that Critical Inner voice (evil inner witch) that only applauds and voices its opinion according to the beliefs and values of our culture, where it suits our soul or not.  If we listen to that Evil Inner witch, as I call that critical inner voice, we begin to experience woundedness in body, mind, heart and soul.  We can become pessimistic and see challenging things as difficult things.  We can begin to feel weary instead of empowered.  We can feel annoyed rather than simply see things as inconvenient.  We forget that we are lifelong learners with the I-do-not-know therefore I-am-not-good-enough.    We say we “can’t” rather than I-can-try.  Yet.  We forget to add the “yet”.  Maybe it is time to do some housecleaning of the language of our psyche.  Re-Frame.

When we catch ourselves with the negative self-talk, we need to listen to it and re-label those thoughts for what they are.  We need to see if that self-talk is giving us relief or pleasure for the Ego/Evil Inner witch and are on our way to acting/reacting due to the anxiety that the amygdala is inviting.  We need to think about the WHY of feelings and call them for what they are.  (Usually anxiety that is Ego-driven.)  Name the feeling for what it really is and it dissipates.  Re-Label.

When you feel negative thoughts starting to happen, check the importance.  Check the accuracy.  The Critical Inner voice loves to exaggerate.  Don’t try to deny the feelings.  They are valid in their own skewed way.  Think on them.  Get them sorted and then go do something wonderful for your bravery and fortitude.  Re-Focus.

Because the Critical Inner Voice is not authentic, not based on reality of you, those negative thoughts can absolutely be shuffled off.  Discern the difference between that false voice (fake news) and your soul.  There is a still small voice no matter how long it has been since you actually listened for and to it.  It is the voice of value.  Re-Value.

No matter what anyone says to us, we have to remember, even in our darkest moments or hours or days, that we have the DNA of our first maternal ancestor.  We are directly connected by being flesh of her flesh.  That is a Divine connection.  Be that and don’t let anyone or anything tell you otherwise.

©Carol Desjarlais 5.28.22